Astrium Services' PixAgri satellite imaging service for crop management has just successfully completed its first agricultural campaign for "La Coop federee", the largest agrifood business in Quebec, Canada.

PixAgri has been developed by Astrium Services to help farmers optimize the management and yield of their crops. Working from satellite images, the geo-experts from Astrium in Toulouse provide Canadian producers with information that can detect crop anomalies including drainage faults, excessive leaf growth or seeding problems, in order to improve the quality of their crops and their yield.

The system offers a capability to manage farmland thousands acres wide.

Astrium was awarded this contract in June 2011, for the program that ran from July until August 2011. Two sets of satellite images were recorded of specific plots of land, enabling a comparison between the two images and the vegetation development maps were sent to the Canadian farmers.

It enabled around 200 producers of maize, soy and market garden crops, covering more than 70,000 hectares to make decisions on crop cultivation. This campaign follows an evaluation phase requested by La Coop federee in 2008.

After 10 years' of success of the French programme "Farmstar", this first campaign outside Europe demonstrates Astrium's ability to develop products that can be adapted to suit any production conditions anywhere in the world.

Astrium has also conducted other experimental programs in South Africa and the United States.