New Online SATSHOT Imagery and Sugarbeet Mapping System Now Available to American Crystal Sugar.

November 20, 2006

Agri ImaGIS Technologies and American Crystal Sugar have agreed to develop an expanded web-based precision ag system available to its growers. The new Satshot ACS System will be available to all growers to help manage not only their sugar beets but also their other crops.

The new Satshot ACS system is entirely web-based. All GPS mapped sugar beet fields from ACS are be housed on the system; growers can simply click on the field they want to analyze, building VRA maps by themselves or with the help of their agriculturist or consultant.

30 Meter resolution Landsat Satellite imagery will make up the bulk of the imagery on the system, supplemented with 23.5 meter resolution from the Indian IRS satellite and the 15 meter Aster satellite when available. Optional higher resolution imagery, such as SPOT 20 Meter and 10 meter, IKONOS 4 meter or aerial high resolution 1 meter imagery will be available for an additional acreage charge.

The Satshot ACS system will now provide tools for the Beet Top Imagery Nitrogen program. Growers can build variable rate sugar beet application maps in minutes. The system includes tools to analyze your fields by vegetation biomass using many different images tied to field boundary locations. Tools are also available to adjust, edit and combine zones and set each zone to the desired fertilizer application rate based on an economic analysis work sheet. Once a vegetation zone beet top analysis is completed, simply export the geo referenced variable rate application to your applicator. This export requires a $1.50 per acre charge which you as growers have the option to have deducted from your next beet payment.

The new Satshot ACS system provides quick access to tools over the World Wide Web to store and process your field data. This means you or your agriculturist (or both) can access your field securely and quickly over any computer with your unique login and password. These new features also allow you to analyze and build maps of all your fields using the whole imagery archive that we have provided to ACS over the years, anywhere, anytime.

In the near future, we also will be incorporating new tools like topography, yield mapping, weather and field reporting in the Satshot ACS system. Growers will be able to view LIDAR topography maps (where available) as well as build a flow map from this data set. Also growers will be able to upload their RTK GPS elevation data to the system and process it for flow maps as well. Some of these services will have extra charges applied to them, depending which features are used.

Growers are able to sign up through their agriculturist or participate through their local consultant or dealer. We encourage you to contact your agriculturist or Agri ImaGIS Technologies for further information. We hope these new tools will help you as an ACS grower to manage your field more efficiently and profitably.

The new Satshot ACS website.

ACS Satshot Mapcenter

You can access your field at any time from any web based computer. The new Satshot ACS Mapcenter will analyze your field vegetation management zones any way you want, and export or email the finished VRA map directly to a designated applicator or your own tractor.

Each field can be analyzed individually or as a group and and saved to the system. Each analyzed layer can be saved and easily accessed again and changed. As shown these analyses can be overlaid with high resolution imagery, such as DOQ and NAIP photographs.

You and your agriculturist can view and analyze the field and share data; all changes made by either of you are visible to the other. The Satshot ACS system allows you to have access to any file you created whenever and wherever you want.

Multiple dates of Near Infrared imagery of your field can be analyzed and overlaid with other data, such as soil test data points, soils layers and other data layers stored in the system. You now have control of your own field information.

We also make available tools for creating reports on your fields, based on the analyses and economic calculations you save to the system. These are generated with the click of a button as PDF documents that can be viewed and printed on any computer, and contain detailed economic data, including acreage and costs for each zone. As shown in the sample page below, the reports give you an at-a-glance estimate of your economic data for each field.

Sample page from a report generated by the Satshot ACS system.

Training:

Call us for upcoming weekly training class dates. Each class will be open to 4 attendees per session, and will show how you can analyze your own field and make VRA maps and reports. Call us at 701-235-5767 or email lanny@satshot.com for upcoming dates and times.

To help you update your account or add you as an account, go to the Crystal Sugar website, or talk to your ACS agriculturist.