Map will be top for crops

Crops in every field farmed in Scotland have been recorded by satellite imagery to create a new interactive map to help break down agricultural land use.

The Scottish Crop Map, which includes all of Renfrewshire’s farmed land, uses data from 2019 to predict the crop types using radar images from the European Space Agency (ESA) Copernicus Satellite Programme and to recognise the crops growing in nearly 400,000 fields in Scotland.

The map has been developed by the Scottish Government ’ s Rural & Environmental Science and Analytical Services (RESAS), working in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee ( JNCC).

Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon said: “This map is a very exciting development and, along with other digital innovations, will provide greater insight into rural land use.

“Future iterations of the map, combined with other datasets, could have a significantly broader scope of use, providing real time data that would help with community and farm level land- use planning and management.

“The statistics we have on Scotland’s agricultural sector typically rely on surveys being completed by a large number of farmers.

“Gathering data in this way would reduce the amount of time our farmers and crofters have to spend reporting this.”