Paris, 11 May 2009
EFITA newsletter / 412 / European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture,
Food and the Environment
New technology for the assessment of soil properties and soil degradation
indicators
The DIGISOIL Consortium (FP7 funded project) involving the SOIL Action of
the Joint Research Centre, is currently in the process of developing a new technology
for the assessment of soil properties and soil degradation indicators that can
be used for producing high quality geo-referenced soil maps.
The technology consists of:
- a hardware machine usually a truck or a quad integrating a platform that employs
proximal and ground-based soil scan systems (sensors) that can measure accurately
(0.5 – 2 m) the signals from the soils;
- a software which transform the signals into the following soil properties:
.Soil texture
.Water content (volumetric and gravimetric) (quantity of water contained in
a soil)
.Organic matter (soil matter deriving from plants and animals)
.Soil bulk density (mass of oven dry soil/core volume)
.Electro conductivity (measure of soil’s ability to conduct an electric current)
.Carbonate rate (percentage of carbonate in soil)
.Soil depth
.Compaction depth (deterioration of soil structure or loss of soil features
by mechanistic pressure, predominantly from agricultural practices)
Following these measurements, the technology leads to detailed geo-referenced
maps of soil properties. Moreover, from the maps, it is possible to offer end
user-targeted services, such as fertilizer recommendations and/or analysis of
soil risks degradation intensity.
Before deploying the technology, and in order to better target it to the end
user, we are launching a survey which aims to assess the economic feasibility
of such an undertaking and its relevance to the end user.
To this aim, as a potential end user, we kindly ask you to indicate whether
you are interested in making use of this technology and if so, which services
you wish to employ. You should fill out first the following questionnaire which
takes less than two minutes. You will be then approached after two weeks to
fill out a second questionnaire which will take you five minutes of your time.
Thanks a lot in advance for your precious contribution.
See: http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/projects/digisoil/survey.html
Contact: Florence CARRE
E-mail: florence.carre(a)jrc.ec.europa.eu
"Better Training for Safer Food" initiative gets off to Africa
On 3 April EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou launched at the headquarters
of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a new initiative – “Better Training
for Safer Food in Africa”. The initiative was launched during a high-level conference
taking place in the Ethiopian capital city, in an effort to help developing
countries improve their food safety systems for the benefit of their populations
and economies.
See: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/health_consumer/dyna/consumervoice/create_cv.cfm?cv_id=533
Key Topics Pages Launched on e-Agriculture platform
Based on the increasing demand for information on important issues around
ICT for development, the e-Agriculture secretariat has created a new resource
section on the e-agriculture.org platform focused on specific Key Topics. The first topic is
Mobile Telephony, following the
inputs from the English language Forum held in November 2008, and the
second is on Public-Private Partnerships,
also discussed in a Forum in 2008.
Knowledge Sharing within the e-Agriculture Community
Have you heard of microblogging? One of the most popular new social media
tools isTwitter. e-Agriculture is now on Twitter
sharing bits of information on important news, new resources, and other timely
ideas of interest to the Community. You can follow e-Agriculture
on Twitter. Don’t forget e-Agriculture is also on Delicious, Flickr
and YouTube . Please also feel free
to contribute to the Knowledge Base and the News and Events
sections on the e-agriculture website. The more people participate, the richer
and broader will be the exchange.
Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. It is yet another example
of why people learning English have trouble with the language. Learning the
nuances of English makes it a difficult language. (But then, that's probably
true of many languages.)
There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any
other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.' It is listed in the dictionary
as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list,
but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the
officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver,
we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and
some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble,
line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.
And this up is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night. We seem to be
pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP
to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is
used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may
wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out
we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it does
not rain for awhile, things dry UP.
One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now ........my time is UP,
so it's time to shut UP!
Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at
night?
U P
Don't screw UP. Send this on to everyone you look UP in your address book.
And NOW I'll shut UP...
Contact: Orestis TRINGIDES
Mél : orestist(a)gmail.com
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