Aerial photography used to compile crop statistics

The National Statistics Office yesterday unveiled a new way of compiling agriculture statistics - using a digital camera from the sky.

A survey has been carried out by what is known as aerial remote sensing linked to the Geographic Information System.

The Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Insular Coastal Dynamics was commissioned to carry out the project, details of which were given during a news conference yesterday.

Mario Vella, manager of the agriculture and fisheries unit, said the survey would determine land cover by type of crop and on a local council basis.

He said such surveys were the most cost-effective tools in statistics and time frames were met much more comfortably.

The last published agriculture census was carried out in 1984. Since then, the NSO has kept all marketing records from the wholesale markets.

However, not all crops pass through the markets, including potatoes for export and tomatoes for processing, and this rendered the statistics somewhat inaccurate.

In 1999, the agriculture and fisheries statistics unit was re-established and entrusted with the task of putting the agricultural statistics system in place in the shortest time possible.

The coastal dynamics centre has four remote sensing systems which can be operated from fixed- or rotary-wing aircraft. One of these, the digital camera system, is utilised for aerial photographic and photogrammetric surveys.

Concurrently with the aerial photography, NSO and centre officials embarked on a ground exercise in order to come up with a solid assessment of the actual crops on the ground.

In fact, the comparative results proved that the aerial remote sensing study results were extremely close to the 2001 census.

For example it was established that there was 10,920 hectares of agricultural land in Malta via remote sensing, in comparison to 10,248 hectares compiled from the census.