Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?
Laurence Peter
BBC News
7 February 2012
Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now – tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze.
Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead.
But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals.
What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland.
But Europe’s farms cost taxpayers billions of euros in subsidies each year, and EU agricultural inspectors are turning to technology to improve their patchy record on preventing fraud and waste.
Satellites have already been in use for several years, and drones are currently undergoing trials…
…Many things in the countryside are constantly changing and when the satellite passes over, “the animals may be in a field or in a barn – you can’t count the numbers very well”, says Roland Randall, an English farmer and environmental researcher in Cambridgeshire.
“When planners looked at the aerial photo records of our farm they thought we had an additional building without permission, but it was actually a haystack,” he told the BBC.
The satellite checks are done partly to produce accurate maps of farms, showing clearly the areas eligible for subsidies.
But farmers these days have to keep their land in “good agricultural and environmental condition” to qualify for subsidies, so images also reveal whether the farmer is complying with the rules on hedges and ponds, say, or buffer strips around arable fields…
The complete article, with photos and graphics, continues at BBC News.
