Netherlands

Farm Drone News: AgEagle Multispectral Sensor, GPS Satellite Launched and Rantizo Spins Off Software

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:08:05 GMT

AgEagle Aerial Systems Unveils New RedEdge-P Green Camera

(AgEagle Aerial Systems)

AgEagle Aerial Systems announces the launch of its new RedEdge-P Green, a multispectral camera designed to enable precision agriculture from planting to harvest.

AgEagle says farmers that use the new sensor payload can achieve higher yields through quicker interventions both early on and late in the crop cycle. Operators can reduce fertilizer and irrigation inputs and engage in smart harvesting techniques using optimized indices and targeted indices like the Plant Senescence Reflectance Index (PSRI).

Available as a standalone camera or in paired configurations with the original RedEdge-P and the RedEdge-P Blue, users can leverage up to 15 noise-resistant, data-rich spectral bands essential for large-area precision agriculture.

The RedEdge-P Green camera is NDAA-compliant and integrates with multiple drone platforms. Each camera kit includes a Calibrated Reflectance Panel (CRP) and a Downwelling Light Sensor (DLS2) for radiometric calibration.

Production of the RedEdge-P Green camera is underway, and the first units are expected to ship this week. For more information about the RedEdge-P Green visit ageagle.com.

Dutch Startup Launches Largest GPS Network for Drones, Tractors

(Lindsey Pound, iStock)

FreshMiners, a Netherlands-based IOT firm, launched a GPS service that enables accurate positioning for agriculture, construction and drone navigation, according to AgriMarketing.com.

AgriMarketing.com writes that the Dutch company is launching a service for extra-accurate GPS. It is intended for drone pilots, farmers and others. With this new technology, users can correct their GPS positions down to the centimeter. Real-time correction signals are sent to the user’s GPS receiver via a global network of base stations. This correction is essential for applications in agriculture, land surveying and drone navigation, among other things.

A subscription gives users access to the GEODNET network, which, with more than 19,000 base stations in over 140 countries, is now reportedly the largest RTK network in the world.

Read more at AgriMarketing.com.

Missouri Doctoral Student Says Drones Are Fine Tool for Crop Scouting

(Photo by Abbie Lankitus)

Researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered a mix of drones and AI can help farmers measure the health of their corn more efficiently.

Instead of relying on handheld devices, which are slow and impractical for larger fields, the researchers surveyed corn fields in mid-Missouri using drones equipped with special cameras to capture images and data.

After combining the drone images with soil data, the Mizzou researchers used a type of AI known as machine learning to quickly predict the chlorophyll content in the corn leaves of the entire field with great accuracy.

The study was led by Fengkai Tian (pictured above), a Mizzou doctoral student who works in the lab of Jianfeng Zhou, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Read more from the University of Missouri here.

Rantizo Spin-Off American Autonomy Inc. Says It Can Close the Spray Drone Data Loop

Rantizo is now connected with the John Deere Operations Center through John Deere API services.

(Rantizo)

Ground rig as-applied data has been around for decades, and it comes in handy when you’re tabulating your end of year scorecard to find out which treatments boosted yields and where a spray might have fallen short.

Yet even though spray drones treated over 10 million crop acres in 2024 alone, there’s still a gap that exists in capturing that data and integrating it into your farm management software.

Former Rantizo CEO Mariah Scott, who is now the CEO of a spinoff operation dubbed American Autonomy Inc., says her new outfit’s AcreConnect platform can help close that gap with API connections into John Deere’s Operations Center and more major FMIS platforms.

“We talk to farmers about getting that complete view of your field management, by closing the loop so you understand what’s effective or what’s not,” Scott says. “Most of the farmers we talk to use spray drones and a ground sprayer, and that (as-applied) data from the sprayer goes right into their FMIS account, but with the spray drone it doesn’t always work like that.”

The deal to divest the spray drone operations side of the business was quietly announced on Aug. 1. The Rantizo name, the startup is a pioneering spray drone service provider, still lives on, but now there’s a clean break between the spraying operations and the software on the back end that enables it.

Learn more about the Rantizo-American Autonomy Spinoff over at PRNewswire.

Your Next Read: Southern Rust Has Infected Iowa Corn in ‘Likely Every County’

Winds of Change: New Governmental Agreement in Netherlands

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 14:27:58 GMT

By Judith de Vor: Snelrewaard, Utrecht, Netherlands

The farmers are delivering change to the political system in the Netherlands now that a farmer-led political party formally joined a coalition government in May.

This story shows what can happen when farmers speak up, tell their stories, and persuade voters to support commonsense approaches to food production.

We can win hearts and minds—and then we can win elections.

As a dairy farmer in the Netherlands, I’m encouraged by the result because it is an opportunity to help my country’s agricultural policies move forward in a way that balances the interests of farmers, consumers, and the environment.

It also holds lessons for the rest of Europe, where farmers in Germany and elsewhere have protested policies that unfairly restrict agriculture. Farmers have objected to regulations that treat them as foes. We should be friends in a quest to supply Europe with the food it needs in a way that is both economically and environmentally sustainable.

The political achievement of farmers in the Netherlands began in crisis , when the previous government announced a campaign to decrease nitrogen emissions. Its plan can be summed up in just one sentence: Insufficiently in balance with other factors that determine the quality of nature, insufficiently in balance with the economic situation of the farmer, insufficiently taking into account the feelings and realization that several generations have their farms in one place, and insufficiently doing justice to the changes and improvements that have taken place. Focusing on reducing livestock is not the solution.

That’s the threat when farmers don’t have a voice in government. People who know little or nothing about agriculture and food production propose reckless and devastating schemes.

In response to this emergency, farmers created a new political party: the Farmer-Citizen Movement , also known as “BBB,” an abbreviation for its Dutch name, BoerBurgerBeweging. It won a single election in 2021: a seat in Parliament for one of its founders.

Then came a series of victories in 2023. In March, the BBB won more than a hundred seats in provincial governments, in an early sign of what would come. In May, it won 16 seats in the Senate. Finally, in November, it won six additional seats in Parliament.

Historically, in the Netherlands we almost always have a coalition government among its various political parties. And now, the next chapter has been added: The BBB and three others have come together in an alliance. The members of the coalition are still building a cabinet, but they have developed a policy agenda and recently selected the next Prime Minister: Dick Schoof, a former Intelligence Chief.

The most visible change involves a name, as the current Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality will become the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security, and Nature. This may look merely symbolic, but symbols can have real meaning—and replacing “Food Quality” with “Food Security” indicates a new emphasis on food production and the farmers who make it possible, with the complex geo-political situation in mind.

Keeping the word “Nature” in the name also is vital because farmers care about conservation. We work close on the land and in its soil. Our livelihoods depend on tending to it—and that involves looking at nature more broadly than nitrogen alone. Rather than the approach of the previous government, however, the new coalition will work with farmers to create reasonable objectives for livestock, manure, and more. When this is done correctly, the farmer has the opportunity to look at the company-specific elements and use the freedom of craftsmanship to achieve the goals.

Most important, though, is a new spirit represented in the coalition agreement. Rather than treating farmers as a problem to be solved, the incoming government will see them as resources who play an important role in the national and rural economies, international trade, and the environment.

With this fresh approach, we may even be able to convince more young people to consider careers in agriculture. They’re the future of food production everywhere, but the attacks on farmers in the Netherlands had created too much uncertainty and discouraged too many. This bad situation may now improve.

None of these accomplishments would have happened if farmers had stayed quiet. We’re often tempted to avoid politics, in the belief that if we just focus on our work, everything will turn out alright.

We may not be interested in politics all the time, but politics is interested in us—and we must continue to join political conversations, even if they’re uncomfortable and we’re reluctant.

Farmers have positive stories to tell—and by telling them here in the Netherlands, we’ve inspired what journalist Gerardo Fortuna of EuroNews recently called “the first activist farmers’ political group to break into government.” It might be a wind of change for agriculture in the next couple of years.

Judith de Vor and her husband have a modern, sustainable dairy farm in the central area of the Netherlands. They have created an educational center on their farm for school children and to decrease the information gap between policy makers and farmers. Judith is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Which Foreign Country Owns the Most Farmland in the U.S.? Hint: It's Not China

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 17:24:37 GMT

Controversy continues to grow across the U.S., and China is the primary target of the new rules. However, China doesn’t own the most farmland in the U.S., according to a new USDA report. It’s actually Canada, which accounts for 32%, or 14.2 million acres.

Rounding out the top five are the Netherlands at 12%, Italy at 6%, the United Kingdom at 6% and Germany at 5%. Together, citizens in those countries hold 13 million acres, or 29%, of the foreign-held acres in the U.S. China owns less than 1%, or 349,442 acres.

All told, 43.4 million acres of forest and farmland in the U.S., or 3.4% of all ag land, is foreign owned as of Dec. 31, 2022. Roughly 30 million of those acres are reported as foreign-owned, with the remainder primarily under a 10-year-or-longer lease. Of the 30 million, 66% is owner-operated, 14% has a tenant or sharecropper as the producer and 12% report a manager other than the owner or a tenant/sharecropper as producer. The remaining 7% are “NA.”

USDA says the two biggest Chinese-owned companies with land holdings in the U.S. are Brazos Highland and Murphy Brown LLC, which owns Smithfield Foods. Brazos Highland reported owning 102,345 acres, and Smithfield owns 97,975 acres.

The top five states with the largest Chinese holdings are:

Texas at 162,167 acres
North Carolina at 44,776 acres
Missouri at 43,071 acres
Utah at 32,447 acres
Virginia at 14,382 acres

USDA reports those five states combined account for 85% of China’s farmland ownership. In Texas, USDA reports China has long-term leases associated with wind energy, and in North Carolina and Missouri, ownership is tied to Smithfield and producers who contract for pork production.

More States to Take Up Possible Bans in 2024

Foreign-held farmland has become a hot button topic on Capitol Hill. Farm Journal Washington correspondent Jim Wiesemeyer thinks it will continue to gain momentum in 2024 as a political ploy used by candidates.

“It’s an emotional issue, and it’s not a simple issue either,” Wiesemeyer says. “I was recently in Missouri, and some commodity leaders worry about the negative consequences of going too far. No one’s saying China should not be watched relative to buying farmland near airports, national security is involved in that case, but more than a few farmers are looking at the potential downsides for pork producers who contract with Smithfield and the number of acres they own.”

One of those unintended consequences is playing out in Arkansas.

“I’m announcing Syngenta, a Chinese state-owned agrichemical company, must give up its landing holdings in Arkansas,” says Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, referencing a 160-acre research site owned by Northrup King Seed, a Syngenta subsidiary.

Eric Boeck, president of Syngenta Seeds North America, told Farm Journal editor Clinton Griffiths: “EPA and USDA many times require us to do work and permitting right in the same state as we’re going to sell products. One of the first things we have to make sure we figure out is how we work with the local community to make sure we’re still getting products tested in their backyard, so we have the ability to sell those products.”

Syngenta argues if they sell that particular farm, Arkansas farmers will be at a disadvantage because research can’t be done in the same weather and soil conditions.

“We’re heavy in the soybean market in Arkansas, some of those maturity zones, we have a very significant market share and savings,” Boeck says. “We want to make sure we’re protecting those farmers’ abilities to be able to use our products.”

Wiesemeyer says the bigger issue for U.S. farmland might be solar panels, with farmers in states like Missouri reporting companies have offered to pay more than $1,000 per acre cash rent to put solar panels on their farm. At such a high price, he says it’s eating up acres of farmland, with the potential to grow even more in 2024.

John Phipps: Is the Outrage By Dutch Farmers Now Being Heard by the World Enough to Prevent Policy Changes?

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 22:15:26 GMT

As if record-breaking heat wasn’t enough to trigger tempers, Europe and especially the Netherlands have been dealing with an increasingly incendiary political situation pitting the country’s farmers against EU government plans to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030.

The major target is nitrous oxides, of which agriculture contributes about half. But Dutch farmers, who are an ag exporting power behind only the U.S., contend the efforts will force many producers out of business – perhaps as many as 30 percent. This may be conservative.

Protests, which began three years ago, have intensified with tractor blockades of major roads and city centers. In addition, farmers are demanding more positive media coverage, and predictably, more government aid.

Related news: Dutch Farmers Are Protesting A Government Policy Canada and Ireland are Now Proposing, Is The U.S. Next?

They also are pointing fingers of blame at other EU countries and companies like Shell and Tata Steel. Unusual for Europe, a few shots have been fired by police at protestors, but most demonstrations were relatively orderly, if angry. All this resentment and outrage by farmers faces two formidable hurdles to resolution.

The first is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) whose large subsidies to agriculture has made them economically dependent. Now the series of heat waves which have been scorching the continent with growing frequency over the last two decades, is setting all-time records this summer across Europe.

With environmental political parties in the Greens possessing considerable clout, and not enough air-conditioning, public opinion has not been overwhelmingly sympathetic to farmers. Dutch farmers are noted for their professional and business skill, but due to their intense management, the carrying capacity for livestock like dairy cows in their country has likely been met or even exceeded. It’s why you see Dutch emigres operating all over the world, including the U.S.

While the Dutch protests have attracted the most attention, the EU emissions proposals threaten farmers across the bloc. Given the economics and politics of this debate, however, a difficult transition for producers seems inevitable.