For the last 6 years we've been working with Andrew Robson who has been leading a sugar industry project on using satellite technology to determine crop yield and crop health. Andrew is based at UNE at Armidale.
Andrew's work started in Qld and so there has been some challenges adapting to 2 year crops. This technology works by measuring the vegetation cover of the crop and then using some fancy maths to determine yield.
This table shows the cane yield estimated from the satellite images and the comparison between satellite and farmer estimates.
Mill |
1-year(t/ha) |
2-year(t/ha) |
Sat estimate(t) |
Growers estimate(t) |
Condong |
93 | 119 | 486,120 | 515,000 |
Broadwater |
88 | 128 | 680,000 | 705,000 |
Harwood |
102 | 144 | 700,000 | 675,000 |
2017 yield maps for the three mills can be downloaded from the links below.
