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Narrator:  Agri-geomatics is concerned with the study of the earth's surface.
It's also an area of science that is revolutionizing the way we farm and feed the world.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is a leading contributor to this revolution.
Our researchers use geomatic tools including satellites...
...to create highly accurate maps and data sets on a weekly basis.
The tools and their resulting data help farmers, agronomists...
...soil and water engineers plant breeders and more...
...both in Canada and around the world.
And as one of Canada's original founding departments...
...it's only fitting that the department celebrates Canada's 150th anniversary...
...with a show of it's leading-edge agri-geomatics capabilities.
Ian Jarvis:  My name is Ian Jarvis.
I'm director of a group called AgroClimate, Geomatics, and Earth Observation.
Our staff took a logo of the Canada 150...
...and they used the geomatic information systems to overlay it on maps of the field.
This combined with the global positioning system, or GPS technology...
...tells the combine where to go, when to turn, and so on.   
It represents a fun application of the science and technology...
...that the agricultural sector is using on a day-to-day basis.
Narrator:  Aside from enabling the creation of celebratory field art in a wheat field...
...the real value of agri-geomatics is seen in it's daily use on farms.
Ian Jarvis:  Our farmers are leading edge in terms of the adoption of this technology.  
They're able to get very detailed information on the state of their fields...
...and this informs how they plant, what they plant, and where they plant their crops.
All this technology is now coming together.  Things we were doing research on forty years ago...
...we're now actually applying operationally on a daily and weekly basis.
It's really having a big impact on both the sustainability but also the profitability...
...of agriculture in Canada.
Something that really excites me is all the open data that's available now.
We're reaching the point now where we can get high resolution data...
...over all of Canada almost on a daily basis.
We use all this information to produce things like a weekly crop condition assessment using satellite imagery.
We do the same with soil moisture; a weekly assessment of surface soil moisture...
...across Canada.   As we do our national crop monitoring interpretations...
...we feed that up through international programs.  What this does is create information for the markets...  
...that helps stabilize the markets.
Narrator:  The impact of agri-geomatics is enormous.
From the farm to international markets the availability of information to the agricultural sector....
...has increased ten fold in recent years and is driving innovation and this new revolution.
Ian Jarvis:  It's quite an exciting time.  
It's the cornerstone of farming for the future I think.
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