From 23 to 25 November 2011, the Monitoring Agricultural Resources (MARS) Unit of the IES co-organised the 17th Annual GEOCAP Conference in Tallinn, Estonia, with the support of the Estonian Ministry of Agriculture and the Estonian Paying Agency. The topic of the Conference was ‘Geomatics in support of the CAP: towards a sound management of rural land areas’.

Around 300 participants attended the event. The audience was made up of Commission Services, industry (image providers and software providers), Member States administrations (Ministries of Agriculture, Paying Agencies) and Universities from all Members States and also from Croatia, Turkey, FYROM, Iceland, Switzerland and Norway.

The opening speech was given by the Estonian Minister of Agriculture, Mr Seeder, and the MARS Head of Unit, Olivier Leo.

The Conference tackled several issues related to policy impact and implementation, Control with Remote Sensing (CwRS) campaign statistics, GEOCAP Work Program and Land Parcel Identification System Quality Assurance (LPIS QA). In addition, four technical parallel sessions have been organised on sensors, Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) controls, LPIS and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) co-chaired respectively by IES scientists Par Astrand, Vincenzo Angileri, Wim Devos and Philippe Loudjani. Training sessions were also given on the Live Image Ordering system (LIODOTNET) and bilateral discussions were held with all image providers.

The IES made 12 presentations and exhibited three posters including the ’Automatic assessment of land parcel identification systems for agricultural management’ by K. Tasdemir and C. Wirnhardt.

The Conference proved to be very fruitful and facilitated many discussions between participants.

Agenda and main presentations: http://mars.jrc.ec.europa.eu/mars/News-Events/17-GeoCAP-conference/Agenda