January 11, 1999

BOZEMAN, Mont. - Agri ImaGIS, a North Dakota remote sensing company with offices in Maddock and Fargo, specializes in providing value-added satellite imagery to the agriculture industry. Clients include major sugar beet companies, seed and chemical products firms, farmer cooperatives, and individual producers. The company is at the forefront in developing a commercial market for satellite images in precision agriculture in the United States.

NASA-MSU TechLink, in Bozeman, Montana, has been helping Agri ImaGIS develop software to deliver satellite imagery over the Internet to the agricultural industry. Recently, TechLink helped to broker a partnership between Agri ImaGIS and a NASA-funded research initiative at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, to commercialize NASA-developed software and expand Agri ImaGIS's value-added services.

Satellite imagery can be a valuable tool in precision farming (sometimes called "site-specific" or "prescription" farming). For example, satellite images can be used to map highly variable patterns of productivity within a given farm field that are based on spatial variations in soil characteristics, elevation, average yield, and other factors. Once mapped, these different patterns can be used to establish "management units" for carrying out precision farming techniques, such as variable-rate applications of fertilizer. Precision farming is economically attractive because it allows farmers to add fertilizer, pesticides, or other chemicals only to areas needing treatment‹and only in the amounts necessary‹providing significant cost savings and increased yields. In addition, precision farming has important environmental benefits: it prevents excess applications of farm chemicals that can run off and pollute neighboring streams.

In fall 1997, NASA-MSU TechLink assisted Agri ImaGIS in improving its capabilities for delivering satellite images over the Internet. By spring 1998, the company began to provide satellite images of farmland to agricultural clients throughout the central United States. However, Agri ImaGIS's clients were not able to search the company's database over the Internet for available satellite scenes, browse through the available images to determine their suitability, or download these images directly. Instead, they had to telephone the company to discuss image availability and arrange for electronic- image file transfers. Agri ImaGIS wanted to overcome these shortcomings. In addition, it wanted to develop the ability to provide digital cartographic (GIS) data over the Internet, such as maps of road networks, topography, soil classification, and agricultural yields.

TechLink learned that software with the desired functions had recently been developed through NASA's Remote Sensing Database Program, "Public Use of Earth and Space Science Data over the Internet." From 1995 through 1997, NASA funded a collaboration between the Department of Forestry at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for research on Internet delivery of natural resource management data. Called the ForNet Project, this collaboration resulted in two successful software packages, ImageView and MapServer, for Internet delivery of satellite images and map data, respectively. Due to its project success, the University of Minnesota's Department of Forestry was awarded a five-year grant in 1998 by NASA's Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Program to continue development of these software products. Together, they include the innovative "query and browse" and other interactive features that Agri ImaGIS needed to improve its Internet capabilities.

In December 1998, TechLink helped Agri ImaGIS establish a partnership with the University of Minnesota group that is allowing Agri ImaGIS to adapt and further develop the ForNet software packages to meet its Internet commerce needs. TechLink is currently assisting Agri ImaGIS in this process. By mid- to late-1999, Agri ImaGIS's clients should be able to search the company's web site, preview available images and maps, download these directly, and be billed automatically.

In addition, Agri ImaGIS will serve as an industry partner to the University of Minnesota's NASA-funded ESIP project to evaluate its software developments for improved Internet delivery of image and map data to the agricultural industry. Through this partnership, Agri ImaGIS will have access to the new software products. In exchange, it will help guide the ESIP team's software development and provide feedback on the new software's utility. Agri ImaGIS is currently the only private-sector partner in the initiative.

NASA-MSU TechLink is committed to transferring NASA-developed technology to the agricultural sector in Montana and the surrounding region. The overriding objective is both to help increase the economic viability of this sector as well as to foster the emerging sector of agricultural technology companies in the region.

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