Proceedings of the Workshop on Remote Sensing for Agriculture in the 21st Century October 23-25th, 1996    Session 7:  What are Potential Impediments to Technology Transfer to the Agricultural/Rural Sector? Transcription Notes

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Introduction
WM: In order to make our discussions here productive we will need to focus on issues that we may be able to influence and I would like to know if we can come to some agreement on several issues:
1. There is some new technology that would increase the return on the investments by the growers, in particular, and ag business in general.

2. There do exist some potential impediments to the transfer of that technology in the rural sector.

3. The responsibility or opportunity to solve technology transfer problems rests with all of the players involved, not in any one particular sector. Universities; remote sensing industries - if they want to sell their product, they have some responsibility to solve technology; ag businesses - if the coops, equipment vendors and chemical producers all want to benefit from selling more implements and supplies and increase production, they have some responsibility; governments; and growers.

Goal:  Ideally, if everybody works together, we’re going to get to the point where the farmers driving the tractors are on a network that’s tells them exactly what’s happening all the time.  The data will be encoded such that they can get to it with a password at the resolution it takes to satisfy them.  All those above the farmers can get their data at the resolution that satisfies their needs without violating the farmer’s rights.

Approach to the discussion group
1. Identify the impediments (list and discuss them).
2. Develop a list of actions or activities that, if implemented, would partially or completely remove the impediment.
3. Prioritize the list.
4. Identify the sector of the community that could best address these issues.

Assumptions
1. Existing satellite systems and those planned are capable of providing data, when appropriately processed, will add some significant value to agriculture.

2. The technology base is capable of supporting the data production and data product development.

3. The technology base for supporting the data product delivery is totally adequate now and will be in the future.

[Disagreement and ensuing discussion about third assumption]
P:  Confidence and data product delivery issues in the agricultural community are current problems of successful adoption and transfer, which could relate to the communication of data.  In other words, how do we get that product data delivery out there?  How do we get the optimum data delivery system?  That seems to be a problem that exists today.  It’s a problem with information that has to be given to the private sector, when they want to spend the money.  The technology is there.  It’s just a matter of putting them together.  When there’s a demand, it will happen.

WM:  We heard yesterday that on one particular project, they were delivering the data by hand in a car 80 miles, and I expect the main reason for that was the interaction between the two people -- there deliverer and the deliveree -- because coming over the network was a cultural problem, and they didn’t want them to deal with it.  But, I’m perfectly willing to take the third assumption off if people really believe we want to talk about it.  But I don’t think that anyone here today is from communications, data systems or the data network industry so I don’t think that we can properly address that issue.

P:  The communications issue is being addressed at the federal level with the changes in the telecommunications law to determine where there’s [going to be] rural internet connections are needed [via satellite, phone lines, etc.].  It is something that is being actively worked on.

Issues of Technology Transfer
1.  Rural areas may wait a long time to receive technology
P:  There is a “chicken and the egg” problem -- to bring in the Internet with the high quality standards in the rural areas, you’re investing in a lot of infrastructure and you want to make sure there’s some use for it.  Then you have people who aren’t devising uses for an infrastructure that isn’t there. From talking to our telecommunications carrier, when we start talking about wanting to send large shipments of data in the form of images to homes and schools, they like that because they start to see that someone wants to use this stuff.  Otherwise, I worry that rural areas with the new telecommunications bill will just be left out as the last ones anyone gets to, because they’re not making as much money off them.  It’s like a rural electrification problem.  I’d like to leverage what we’re doing to help create justification for wanting good telecommunication infrastructure in rural areas.

2.  The hardware and software are more of an institutional problem than a technical problem

3.  Cost and ability to provide data in a timely manner
P:  The two companies that are currently providing imagery like SPOT and EOSAT still have a 48-hour turn-around time and to get it from EOSAT it cost three times the amount of the image; two times as much plus the image from Spot.  So there must be some technological problem that they can’t overcome, because it’s very costly for them and they can’t get it faster than 48 hours.

P:  “Technology is not a problem” -- I have a concern that that is an overstatement.  You still have problems with technology in terms of accuracy, precision and the hardware.  In talking about the cost, engineers say we can do anything for a price, but for farmers, it’s how cheaply it can be done.  It’s all related to the cost of this technology.

4.  Identifying grower needs and capabilities.
P:  From my experience of having to actually get products to customers in the rural countryside, our biggest impediment is the customer.  What do they want to do?  Are they willing to learn how to use a computer and learn how to work a basic communication program that costs $100 when you dial it up?  Some of them aren’t willing to do that and that’s okay.  We’re willing to work around that.  R:  If they were going to make a lot more money, they’d do it -- it’s economic incentive.  If I’m going to make $50,000 more off that crop, because I can learn how to do this, then I’m going to do it.

P:  As a company, it’s our obligation to make it as transparent as possible to get that product to that customer.  It’s my obligation to understand the timeliness benefit and therefore the burden is on me to provide that information and figure out how to provide that information in a timely manner.  I take that burden off the customer so they can think about their business.  I think the bottom line is that it’s not an infrastructure issue, it’s an implementation issue.

5.  Culture of users
WM:  Transferring of data is a difficult situation anywhere.  In order for technology to work and be implemented, the potential users must change the way they make decisions.  Often growers are from an older population  (55 average) and are not ready to make cultural changes late in life.  In developing countries, it is often very difficult to implement and transfer technology to policy makers.  Even when training is provided, the few people who are trained may leave for other jobs and cannot be replaced.  Eventually the equipment becomes useless, because no one can use it.

6.  Adequate understanding of user needs by remote sensing industries
WM:  Historically, remote sensing industries were designed by engineers who left out the science element required to incorporate agricultural leads into the product.

7.  Interaction between remote sensing industries and users
WM:  In the past, there has been very little input from growers, agriculture businesses and incorporations.  Currently, input from growers and agriculture groups is being increased.  Interaction is needed to determine what the final product will be and to create a better product.

8.  Perceived or actual unfairness of impact of new technologies among people and groups in the agriculture world
WM:  The growers are suspicious that information is being utilized more by regulatory agencies or agriculture business bureaus and the commodities people.  They think commodity people are taking advantage of everybody, because they get the information first.  The commodity people have money and can get the information that gives them some advantage over others.

P:  [#6-7 above] are almost like artifacts of the government structure, because civil remote sensing started with NASA.  NASA was the space agency and there weren’t any other players 20-30 years ago.  To clear up #8 [above], the private industry objective is to serve the agricultural business.  They go talk to the agriculture businesses.  I think [#6-7 above] are not big issues if you have the objective to do them.  Up to now it’s never been done because no organization had that objective.  WM:  And the resolution.  We never had the mission because we never had the resolution.  It wasn’t a matter of having the mission; we couldn’t have done that.  We didn’t have the resolution and the repeat cycle.  These guys are bringing in their own resolution and their own repeat cycle, so they will solve the problem.  But I think right now it’s an impediment because it’s a brand new thing.  I do believe that we’re going to have to have a lot of agronomists, and people who have managed agricultural activities on their teams, in order to get those products.

IMPEDIMENT #1:  User Awareness of Remote Sensing
P:  People don’t know about this technology -- they don’t have the foggiest idea what remote sensing and satellites are for.  This is the number one barrier/impediment.  Businesses that want to sell products can’t sell them when there’s no demand for them due to unawareness .  I think the first step is to get people familiar with what remote sensing is and what it could possibly do.  Give them enough familiarity that they can tell providers what they want.  Make them part of the process so it’s less of a push process.  There’s no pull because it’s a “phantom” product.

Show the value of precision farming by showing actual applications and products.
P:  I talked to a farmer before I came here.  He said the farming community needs to know the value of remote sensing, and on a larger scale, all this precision farming application.  Because they don’t want just one piece of it, they want to see how it all fits together.  Somehow we have to identify the value for the producer.  There are a number of ways to do that and I think it’s critically important.  We’ve talked a lot at this meeting about “pushing through” value.  I know the business entities here were talking about needing more information that we can use in terms of value so we can convey that to our potential customers.  But I also think we need to go the other route, which is the “pull method” -- to get farmers more information on the value, and then they will begin to demand this type of technology.

P:  There’s not a high number of farmers that equate remote sensing to any benefit, other than those who have seen an image of yield.  They’re asking if you can give a yield image from remote sensing earlier.  They’re thinking, “If I can get that [data], I can hedge my crop more safely than what I’m now doing.”  That’s the wrong reason for us doing it.  R:  [Providers] are saying [to farmers] we can do great things for you, but they can’t show them any product.  We’re talking about products that can’t be delivered for the next 2-5 years.  R:  I don’t think we can count on the coffee shop to spread the information.  The few people that are knowledgeable of remote sensing and yield monitors are innovators working with the company to perfect the product.  The innovators are generally reviled in their communities, so don’t rely on these people to spread this technology to the farming community.  R:  But the innovators are all watching with guarded optimism.  Everybody hates Boswell down in the valley, but eventually everybody’s doing what they’re doing too.  There’s a balance there.

Lack of Success Stories
P:  To get back to the “value of the product” comment.  There seems to be a lack of success stories.  Faculty are talking to students showing remote sensing images, but they need to wrap up the story by showing the value of it and how users are actually using the information instead of just showing what can be done.  The same is true for the individual farmer -- they need to see value.  Somebody’s doing something, but they don’t want their competitor to know how they’re getting the edge on it.

Lack of trained personnel/staff that can promote and implement remote sensing
You could look at it that there’s a problem, because there’s this big gap in education.  But you can also look at this [2-5 year] time window as an opportunity to get this education in place.  Very few members of our faculty [at UCD] have any concept of what remote sensing is.  We aren’t even in the position to train the next generation.  I don’t think Davis is unique.  Somehow we have to get the faculty who are actively involved in agricultural research and outreach to buy into this as a component to get into the farm community.
 
Actions/Activities Needed to Increase Users Awareness
Education

Gather and promote current success stories/applications
P:  You need some success stories, some pilot applications that bring the technology to fruition.  Put some performance measure on the technology.  Answer the question for the farmer, “What good will it do me?”  They have to be distributed through associations to the larger community.  There aren’t that many projects in terms of quantity and diversity to answer the question “So what?”  R:  But we’re talking about technology that hasn’t been done yet and is on the verge of starting.  Satellites aren’t flying yet.  Airplane experiments are the only ones you can talk about.

Demonstration Projects
P:  You would want to start some demonstration projects that would show some successes.

Develop process to make imagery meaningful
P:  A success story from North Dakota -- One of our coops is using spot imagery primarily to draw land forms so they reduce the cost of soil sampling.  There’s a business need  to cut cost of soil sampling  and a group private industry that’s taking data and developing a process to do something with it that’s of value to a local business.  Now others want to do it as well.  Imagery itself is of limited value -- develop processes that analyze data from that imagery.  R:  It’s a process where at first people just want to identify field boundaries, then they want to identify different soils.  Once they are familiar with the imagery and have developed the infrastructure to handle the information system, then they start to develop their own ideas about what they want to do.  WM: I envision the problem will start to go away when the high-resolution imagery and products become available.  I don’t think it’s going to go away before that.  There may be a new way to implement user awareness before it happens.

Keep the remote sensing information simple to start
P:  [Everyone’s saying] we need to make the multi-spectral, bistatic, radar, and dual-polarization to build up familiarity.  Laning Falenia, in Maddock, North Dakota has become a salesman in remote spot sensing.  He’s created useful images by interpreting the [raw] data, and has started to have some success.  It’s a business value to the community.  But we haven’t provided any raw data.  Keep it simple.  Time is also an impediment -- a commitment of time is needed.

Determine Key Decisions where Remote Sensing can help Farmers
The basic idea is to communicate to people how much they made, one way or another.  In order to be effective, determine the key decisions that they make and how you can help them.  In light of these decisions, you can simulate how to operate as if you are the farmer.

Recommendations
1.  Assemble a group of people to define and benefits and value of precision farming.

2.  Get information out via farm press.
P:  To create awareness, you have to get away from the idea of remote sensing only.  You need to sit down with a broader group of people and define what the benefits and values are.  Then define benefits of remote sensing, and then go to popular farm press.  A group of people has to come together to filter out and agree on the story.  The farm press has about 77% readership to top farmers and is considered credible by 90% of them.  You need to create the awareness first. R: Not all the information/technology is realized yet, so how can the farm press write up information and know who’s credible? R:  Part of that is government’s role and the universities to lead that role and provide credible information.  WM:  The people to implement this research are the universities, the extension service, the government, the remote sensing industry and the agricultural industry.

3.  Provide training/outreach through NASA.
P:  Get NASA to help providing training for the universities for their students now and outreach for farmers.  They need to connect the current research to what they’re doing.

4.  Gather and convey success stories to the public.
P:  Come up with success stories from participant’s experiences at this meeting that can be verified and quantified, benefits, economic feasibility.

5.  Create a team to gather, distribute and market the information to everyone.
P:  We don’t have tools currently to inform colleagues to effectively explain the value of remote sensing and how it can be applied to their specialty. We need a team of university researchers, tradesmen, professional societies, etc. dedicated to technology transfer supported by a NASA grant that could make the materials, gather the success stories, documents and papers and supply information in a hierarchical system to everyone (K-12, students, extension agencies, ag industry, growers).  Once you develop the material, it’s a function of distribution.  One of the problems I run in to is that [I find someone that’s doing a project with remote sensing and suggest they write it up and put it in Journal X, and they say they are too busy making a living and have no time].  So there needs to be a translator somewhere along the line.  Provide different arrays of information also -- irrigation versus non-irrigation.

P:  I think that basically we need some person that we can depend on to generate high quality documentation of success stories.  We cannot depend on the professors -- most of the professors are very good, but they know nothing about marketing.  Now universities all over the country have offices of technology transfer.  Did you ever ask the technology transfer office at NASA why they are not able to sell anything?  They should say “We are not able to sell anything because of A, B, C.”  R: For about 15, 17 years, NASA has been doing basic research.  Only in the last 2-3 years did they come to the realization that more attention to relevance and global change information was needed.  There’s been several application centers developed, but they are very limited.  Now the Global Change program allocates 1/2 of 1% of the US Budget for fellowships, so every year we fund $24,000 fellowships for about 200 students in terms of science and global change.  [Students] become remote sensing “experts” under their professor.  There hasn’t been that kind of emphasis on the applied side.  R:  The perception of the university is that, in terms of discipline, remote sensing is a tool like graphics.  You don’t have a professor of graphics.  So my feeling is that within the university that basically we need to have some good applications and some good papers and really to try to look at success stories outside the universities. If you can hire one or two people that their job is to market the technology.

P:  Let me be the devil’s advocate. There are several agricultural information systems that are building around the country these days -- John Deere, Esreed and others.  Maybe remote sensing is never going to be a utility in an integrated fashion.  Some of the commercial satellite companies are basing their market strategy on that premise. The fact of the matter is that remote sensing doesn’t necessarily have to be carried to the end user/farmer.  WM:  I happen to think that the biggest part of the responsibility for whatever education the farmer needs, dealing with high resolution and remote sensing, rests upon those companies who are selling that product and making money out of it.  I don’t perceive a massive problem.  Similarly most people who use maps don’t have any idea how maps are made.

6.  Rely on farm product suppliers to market information
P:  It’s the farm product suppliers (implements, chemicals, nutrients, etc.) who ultimately seek these information systems as absolutely mandatory to their survival.  They’ll build those information systems and use whatever tools necessary to improve efficiency on the farm.  You don’t need grants from NASA.  R:  Again we’re going back to a “push” type of mentality.  I’ve worked with the equipment industry extensively.  You have the company up there that’s trying to push a product down, and you’ve got the dealers out here who are waiting for the pull, and in between you’ve got this huge gulf.  That’s what happens, so you need to have the farmers pull in order to get the dealers to move and demand products from the company.  If the company is pushing it down, the dealers are independent dealers, and they’re not going to allow anything to be pushed on them.  For example, John Deere was planning on announcing at the show in Indiana 1995.  They were going to have all this information available for precision farming including the software.  When they announced that to their dealers, their dealers said, “Uh-huh, we are not going to sit down behind a computer.”  They had a cultural problem they had to overcome. So the companies have had to go through this as well.

7.  Implement changes to companies/industries slowly over the long term.
P:  I know a person that’s trying to introduce precision agriculture into a major company, and it’s the culture of the company that he’s having a hard time convincing -- not the management. What they’ve tried to do in the past is simply hire a lot of computer people from schools in Southern CA, so then they come up and work in the company and then they send them out to a town of 1500, and they don’t last 6 months.  They get other computer science jobs, because they don’t fit the culture in any way.  So now they’re coming to rural schools where kids grew up on a farm, they go to a university and learn some new technology. His new strategy is to co-locate with a university, and he wants young people from a rural background who know about computers, images and remote sensing.  If graduates with rural backgrounds go to the company, they wouldn’t mind living in a town of 1500.  It is a long-term strategy to slowly change the culture of the company to where all the employees are comfortable with the new tools.  I don’t know if it’ll succeed, because it’s long term change by management.  This is my point about in trying to change cultures, you don’t just change it overnight.

8.  Funding is necessary to promote information.
P:  One of the problems with faculty is that you’re right on the cutting edge if you’re interested in remote sensing.  Why don’t we take what we were trying to do 20 years and put that out there as products that people want to buy?  R: One of the reasons is because you cannot find funding for work on that kind of activity, so you have to do it for free usually.  The faculty will join in on a joint project to work with you if there’s a funding source available.  They just don’t see doing it all themselves, but they might willing to join you on a project.

IMPEDIMENT #2:  Costs of Acquiring Remote Sensing Technology and Data.
P: The single biggest impediment to the adoption of technology is the cost of the data, historically.  Before the price of the data went up to $4000 or more, there was a robust active large research team of professors out there using that data.  Many of the professors turned their focus from remote sensing to geographic information systems (GIS) research and development [after prices went up].  WM:  By the way, that also shut down the flow of data to the developing world that needed it more desperately that anyone else.  R:  Exactly.  I think that we’re approaching an era where the cost of the data is going to fall precipitously.  I don’t know what the pricing is going to be for the commercial system, but I guarantee that if it is up around the price per acre or price per unit of data that EOSAT or SPOT charges now, the applications are never going to get off the ground.  R:  The cost of the data to the researcher is immaterial to what is going to be the problem of transferring technology to the commercial sector. R:  Before the price of Landsat scenes[?] went up, we owned 4500 Landsat scenes.  Since the price increase, we have bought a total of 12.

Recommendations
1.  Provide low-cost or free data to universities and the research community.
P:  The two things you have listed as impediments [Cost and User Awareness] are forever linked.  They’re not going to lower the cost of satellite data that come from satellite that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, until the volume goes up.  R:  The only way is promote the product, then the more you buy ...R:  But to get the research and to get the students to use the data, you can’t price it high.  For the research and the university community, you give it to them for free from remote sensing industry and to develop the market you charge the companies that have lots of money.

2.  Develop a pricing schedule to make it cost-effective to different groups.
P:  There’s a administration policy of coffer[?].  That’s the cost of our data. R: But the definition of coffer varies between agencies responsible for providing the data. There’s different ways to price the data to make it cost-effective for the grower, researcher and the farmer.  You sell a Landsat scene to a farmer for $4,000 -- he doesn’t care about the rest of the area, he’s only interested in his piece of real estate, so sell the data at a per megabyte price instead of a per scene price.

3.  Expand the market and the market place to lower cost.
P:  I think we need to make a decision.  If you want to drive the price of the data down, you expand the market and the market place for it.  R: But you can’t expand the market if people are unwilling to try it because it costs too much to get into it. R:  That’s where the government should try and come in to help and propose to give the data for free to universities. If you believe in the product, the first sign is to give it for free to the potential users like Apple Computer did.

WM:  Success stories are not always easy to take to the people that you want to hear them.  P:  All of a sudden it was government spying on them, and we were really working with the local coop and their customers. It gets back to we were not working with the individual farmers, we were only working with the coop operators -- you’ve got to involve the users, that was the lesson in that.

4. The students [need] to have access to the data as well as the researchers.  They become a free marketing agent or salesmen for the companies.
P:  [Response to Recommendation #1] What you will find among the commercial data suppliers is that there is a very fine line between that research and the university taking the data and performing value added services for a large spectrum of users who compete then with the commercial suppliers.  The suppliers are not about to give something away in a competing market place. R:  The commercial enterprise are so worried about competition for their products, but competition will expand the market.  The more people who use remote sensing data, the more demand there will be.  It will create the market for remote sensing. R:  There is also incentive to provide researchers with adequate data sources that will enhance their ability to do more advanced research for future products provided it’s not esoteric that it has no commercial value. There’s a part of research that says that the obtuse obscure thing are worthwhile pursuing and to a certain extent its true.  But for a commercial company that’s funding research at universities right now, they’re not aiming for obtuse obscure things, because they’ve got to have a return.  If we recommend giving universities/researchers free data, then we’ve got to be willing to give back to the data suppliers X, Y and Z.  You have to have some say or selection process of who to give the information to that will give you a return or answer questions that you’re interest in.  But when you do research, you’re not increasing user awareness.  In order to increase user awareness, you have to get the user involved.  We’re not talking about basic research, we’re talking about research that yields awareness, application.

5.  Permit and promote sharing of remote sensing data.
P:  Cost is a major impediment, but it’s more than just that -- it’s our ability to share data and distribute it.  Our sharing and distributing policy in the U.S. doesn’t work.  All of the federal agencies who purchase remote sensing product cannot share it with the taxpayer who paid for all that data.  Free data is great, but if we could redistribute the data once it has been paid for once by the government, some kind of a pricing distribution policy attached to it so we could use it more broadly and more fairly with the distributors.  We have to expand our ability to share information more broadly, to make it more practical and to get it institutionalized the way we do business.  That’s a cost factor, but once its paid for by one agency that’s doing business with affiliates, you share the information.  In the government, there has been some attempt to share/make data available among agencies.  The industry can get organized with government and help.

IMPEDIMENT #3:  Lack of Applications for Remote Sensing.
P:  If the data had been available to university at a reasonable cost in the last 10 years, I believe there would be a number of well-developed applications that would be much more mature.  It’s the connection between the data product from remote sensing and the applications the farmers want, which is going to help them with decision making whether its timing of planning, harvesting, estimating yield, etc.  You could do research and get those products in place now with airborne systems.  You need projects that can result in applications and advertising.  Data for research and data for applications.

P:  You can make a recommendation to the government with respect to those systems (LANDSAT, EOSAT), but you also need to make the recommendation to private companies.

Recommendations
WM:  The involved government agencies should consider partnering with the new emerging industries and the universities to try to solve the awareness and application problems.  Data could be bought by the government who can provide it for free to the user with some constraints on the use the data.  P:  We need a program in NASA similar to the Ag Extension program for getting remote sensing data out and promoting its applications and allowing people to become familiar with it. R:  Space Grant (NASA) is working with Cooperative Extension currently to use data and bring them to local communities.  We need to develop programs or software that will assist in making sense of data, perhaps the next step is to talk about some expert system that will give answers for the producer. To build confidence between the farmer and the supplier and show value, there some low level decisions that can be spun out and given to the farmer directly.  Then a higher tier that highlights other types of considerations that need to be dealt with.  That’s where consultants come in.

P: We’re in danger of overestimating what remote sensing can do.  We’re talking about too many products that are not in existence yet.  Farmers fear they are going to be at the mercy of the private industry they’re doing business with.  That speaks to a much larger question of universality of data and ownership of data.  R: That goes back to the culture of the user.  R:  When you build a better product, people will run to it.  The applications are at the government management level, but the applications are not there for the industry/grower.  With respect to agriculture, there’s been a lack of a bottoms up design of a system, focused and directed at agricultural applications.  Why?  Because the systems that have gone up have been designed to serve a wider constituency.

IMPEDIMENT #4:  Lack of Trained Personnel/Staff/Graduates that can Promote and Implement Remote Sensing.
P:  There are not enough graduate or undergraduate students to support the requirements of the remote sensing industry.  This issue relates to the cost of data.  If data was plentiful, there would still be problems generating money to work on projects, but the cost of data is still a constraint.  There is a lack of money to fund remote sensing student programs, in general, and remote sensing application, in particular. R:  Trained people are hard to come by, because the program is in its infancy.  It takes people with vision who are willing to try to acquire that knowledge.  Education and awareness are most important.  The market pull will satisfy the need/demand for training.  R: How can you justify spending millions of dollars on satellites when there is no market?

Recommendations
1.  NASA and USDA should consider shifting some basic research funding to application studies and development at universities and agricultural research institutes.
P:  We need to find out the appropriate questions that agricultural communities need answers to so that remote sensing could be directed toward answering those questions.  Government, industry and academia could increase their effectiveness by an order of magnitude by closer coordination of programs and activities.

2.  NASA should facilitate and fund the formation of an alliance among government, remote sensing industry and university interest which would meet twice yearly to give policy and program guidance to all participating parties.
WM:  A major objective of the alliance would be to statistically analyze large data sets, to the research and applications development community and offer simulated high resolution data to promote product development and personnel training activities at land grant universities.  It should include growers in the process.  NASA should put more emphasis on the incorporation of remote sensing and GIS technology to traditional earth science applied activity - agriculture, geography, geology, agronomy.  R: The commercial supplier is going to come to the graduate student and tell them what they need.  They must be able to do these things, and the professor will drive that.  Students will see what knowledge is needed -- no need for NASA to fund.  There is a hierarchy of needs surrounding the growth in the industry, suitable for all levels of graduates.

IMPEDIMENT #5:  How to transfer large amounts of image data over the existing phone lines.
P:  Almost every farmer in some areas has a satellite dish to capture the data (weather data) and load on TV screen.  R:  I want to be able to download the information into a computer file.  R: There’s a lot of different ways to solve the problems, and there’s a solution in the near future.