There is an increasing need for farmers to document their activities. Consumers expect transparency, commodity traders want near-real time information about yields and the agricultural administration puts high demands on farmers to fulfil the requirements related to financial aid managed through the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Every year the farmer can apply for subsidy payments linked e. g. to good environmental practice. This application process is digitised and includes geographic information about parcels, their location and sizes.

In 2018, the EC decided on a reform of the CAP. A monitoring approach was introduced enabling the administration to systematically monitor the activities on the fields throughout the whole year using satellite imagery. The monitoring should reduce the annual control efforts during the summer period. Besides satellite-derived information, the farmers will be allowed to provide field information through field photos. This is especially important for parcels that are too small to be monitored through the eyes of the Sentinel satellites having a spatial resolution of 10 meter. The CAP/P will enable a user to visualise parcel information geographically and to take geo-tagged photos linked to the parcel. The geo-tag is derived from a smartphone’s GPS unit. The photos will be uploaded to a central data repository and from there further be used for documentation.