Hi Agustín, I spoke to you for a bit that day in Galway and I've though about this a little since. As mentioned, getting access to as many sets (supplier and month) of aerial / satellite / street view type images as possible will be useful.
One way to get past records would be to find out what products / services a farmer bought each year. For example, certain crops require certain fertilisers - I understand tomatoes benefit from modest amounts magnesium sulfate, which might not be useful for other crops. You would need to find out from farmers / coops / suppliers what products were used from invoices, etc. Similarly with some agricultural services, e.g. if a combine harvester is hired-in one year, but not the next. However, this won't necessarily tell you which crop was in which field. As to mapping, you could have an arrangement where farmers (or dedicated surveyors / agricultural advisers) can download an app, mark their fields and what crop (and fertilisers, etc) is in each field. You would then map the farm for them and get them to confirm the data. Of course, not everywhere in the world uses strictly-defined fields like in Ireland or the UK. The next year, the farmer can use the app to click on each mapped field an mark the crop. There is also the matter of language / dialect. In Ireland today, "corn" means maize. Before 1990, it meant wheat and historically, it could be any grain covered by the Corn Acts. Peppers can mean green / yellow / red peppers (all the one fruit at different stages of ripeness) or black / white peppercorns or chili peppers. Colm --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list Talk-ie@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
