Under UC4a an application for mobile devices to facilitate a farmer and/or advisor to upload a geotagged photograph as supporting evidence to scheme applications will be designed, developed and piloted. The ‘Geotagged Photo Application’ will be an integral part of the Area Monitoring System which will be a component of the Integrated Administration & Control System in the CAP post 2020. One of the examples of such mobile application can be found in Lithuania.
In 2018 the NPA (Paying Agency of Lithuania) launched a free and easy to use mobile application named “NMA Agro”, both for IOS and Android. Currently, there are 7000 users. It allows to send pictures with precise coordinates and azimuth directly from the area and it can also measure the distance and size.
This moderns solution helps farmers to report about activities which they performed, such as cultivation of specific crops, implemented investment projects or the problems related to the fulfilment of commitments not only to NPA, but also to State Veterinary and Plant Protection services. On the other hand, it helps Paying Agencies and other institutions to implement the checks from the office and save a lot of time and resources, thus, reduce administrative burden for farmers. The importance of such mobile applications is especially visible during the covid-19 time, when during the quarantine period and after that most of the checks can to be done only remotely.
The mobile application has also access to all the main LPIS layers, for example, soil erosion, Natura2000 territories. Also, it provides access to constantly updated satellite images of the Copernicus program “Sentinel” like vegetation index or crop water stress index, which allow farmers to monitor and assess the condition of the crops grown in their fields and, if necessary, to carry out the necessary farm activities instantly.
Moreover, any citizen of Lithuania can freely see all the annually declared parcels and crops in Lithuania and can report about unattended areas with overgrown trees and shrubs, not cultivated lands, environmental irregularities and etc. In this way, the transparence of EU subsidies is absolute.
The vision is that this mobile application should become a gateway not only for farmers, but also for rural population where they can report to municipalities cracks in roads, damages of signs or pines and etc.
Please check the mobile application commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebQGLLiCGSo).