Eyes in the Sky: Identifying Solutions for Farmers with Aerial Imagery

Years ago, my grandpa worked as a blacksmith in Southern Illinois, doing his small part in creating new technologies for the agricultural world.  Those machines, though groundbreaking at the time, are now a part of everyday life on the farm, and more and more farmers are relying on innovation and automation to run their operation. As the agriculture industry continues to become more and more integrated with technology, farmers need to find a way to embrace the latest technological innovations in order to maximize their yields. That is exactly the kind of service that IntelinAir provides. By flying over farmers' fields with planes equipped with high resolution cameras, IntelinAir is able to capture images of farmland in great detail, which can be used to help identify problems such as weeds, low spots and other issues.
My job this summer, has been with the University of Illinois Sustainable Systems Labs at Turner Hall in partnership with IntelinAir. The labs have their own research plots located on the South Farms, and as part of my internship experience, we have teamed up with IntelinAir by having our research plots photographed at several points throughout the growing season. My job has been to analyze the imagery and soil data from those research plots and create a report on my findings. This report will serve multiple purposes: helping the researchers at the lab identify any problems with the lab fields and how that may be affecting the data we gather, and my report will also help IntelinAir determine the accuracy of their imagery and its potential for small-scale operations. By compiling and analyzing my findings, I'll be able to provide valuable data to both the research lab as well as IntelinAir.
How exactly does the process work? IntelinAir offers ten in-season flights to local farmers, and so they also will fly our fields several times throughout the growing season, capturing high-resolution images of our fields in various stages of growth. This imagery also includes infrared and topographic lenses as well as analytic algorithms which highlight areas of high vegetation, poor performing areas,vegetative rows, and weeds. By comparing our aerial imagery with pictures taken at ground level, I am helping determine how effective IntelinAir's imagery is at catching these issues, and helping identify any bugs or problems, should they arise. Most farmers do not have time to do the type of intensive scouting and research that can be done on a small scale research farm, so my project is a valuable opportunity to test IntelinAir's services on a small scale, which will hopefully lead to an improved product for next year and a better understanding of what types of issues can be captured through aerial imagery.

In addition to managing the field imagery online, my duties include field scouting in order to diagnose problems at the ground level, both on the lab fields and other local farmer fields as well. I also have a series of lab duties including tasks ranging from soil sampling and weighing, to cleaning lab dishes and equipment. So far, the experience has been amazing! These is an incredible variety of work to be done with this internship, which includes a good mix of indoor and outdoor activities. One day, I may be field scouting and the next, I am in the lab reviewing imagery, and the next, I am weighing out soil from the plots. Best of all, the people I have the privilege to work with, both in the lab and IntelinAir, have been very helpful, approachable, and have given me a great deal of freedom to conduct my work.
If we could go back in time all those years to when my grandpa was farming, we would probably marvel at some of the amazing agriculture technologies available today that we sometimes take for granted.  It doesn't seem too far-fetched to imagine a future in which aerial imagery and analytics are commonplace on every farm, and I may look back to this summer and think how meaningful it was to have boots on the ground and eyes in the sky as part of the future of agriculture.