GIS for Agribusiness
In This Issue
Esri
• Fall 2011
GIS for Agribusiness
Esri’s ArcGIS Online Provides Access
to Numerous Free Agriculture Maps
p3
Featured Maps
p4
CGIAR Supports Annual GIS
Conferences in Africa
p6
USDA and Esri Build Geospatial Portal
Mapping Service
p7
Esri News
p7
Esri on the Road
p7
The roots of cooperative sugarcane cultiva
-
tion in the Herbert River catchment basin in
North Queensland, Australia, can be traced
to the early 1880s, when six landowners of
small properties formed the Herbert River
Farmers Association. Shaped by the social and
economic conditions of the day, the landown
-
ers believed that both the sugarcane industry
Australian Sugarcane Farmers
Reap Benefits from Enterprise GIS
Technology Supports Sustainable Development of
Local Industry
By Jim Baumann, Esri Writer
and local residents would be better served by
cooperative farming rather than the planta
-
tion model that had flourished in the area for
the preceding 20 years.
Two years after the association’s beginning,
Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), the
primary sugarcane processing company in the
region, offered agreements to centrally mill its
continued on page 2
Sugarcane field
in the Herbert
River Catchment
Basin of North
Queensland,
Australia.
cane. In 1891, CSR subsequently subdivided its
Homebush Estate into small farms, which it
leased to local farmers with an option to buy.
Though farming methods in the Herbert
River catchment have changed greatly during
2
GIS for Agribusiness
esri.com/agribusiness
the succeeding 130 years, the region’s coopera
-
tive nature has grown even stronger with the
founding of Herbert Resource Information
Centre (HRIC). Established in 1996, this non
-
profit organization supports the sustainable
development of the sugarcane industry in
the lower Herbert River catchment through
technological innovation. It is responsible for
building community networks between local
industry, government, and residents.
Shortly after its formation, HRIC conducted
a mapping project of the Herbert River flood
-
plain. The results of the project proved difficult
to disseminate to both the HRIC coalition
and the local farming community. It was
decided to implement a geographic informa
-
tion system (GIS) that would allow HRIC to
better analyze local sugarcane farming and
distribute its findings. Consequently, HRIC
launched Herbert Information Portal (HIP), a
collaborative GIS using Esri software.
Today, HIP has evolved into an enterprise
system built on Esri’s ArcGIS for Server and
ArcGIS for Desktop and extensions. The GIS
is web based so that HRIC partners and local
farmers can get easy access to information.
continued from page 1
Australian Sugarcane Farmers Reap Benefits from Enterprise GIS
HIP supports most of the critical business
processes in the region’s sugar industry supply
chain by acting as the catalyst for imple
-
menting precision farming technology, from
improved harvesting and transport manage
-
ment to more efficient milling operations.
Applications include cane mapping and man
-
agement, real-time cane harvester monitor
-
ing, Sucrogen rail-safe integration, and cane
yield monitoring systems. These applications
use GIS to promote efficiency, productivity,
and improved environmental outcomes for
HRIC partners and sugarcane growers.
Because the Herbert River catchment basin
is sandwiched between two environmentally
protected areas—Wet Tropics World Heritage
Area and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park—
the cane-growing industry uses the tools
provided by HRIC to improve productivity
while monitoring and reducing impact on the
environment.
“Though initially established as a technol
-
ogy center, we quickly realized that the most
significant value that HRIC could provide to
our partners was the opportunity to build
and enhance relationships among people
and organizations,” says
Raymond De Lai, HRIC
manager. “We are strongly
focused on building trust,
commitment, and coopera
-
tion through a shared vision
among our partners and the
wider community.”
The partners in the
HRIC project include local
government representatives
from Hinchinbrook Shire
Council; the CSR group that
refines and transports the
processed sugarcane; and
Terrain Natural Resource
Management, a nonprofit
agency that builds regional
consensus for natural
resource management. Also
included in the management
coalition are representatives
Herbert Information Portal shows harvested areas and cane harvester movements.
from the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations
and Herbert Cane Productivity Services,
which provide research, development, and
extension services to the sugarcane industry.
“For us, the advantage of a partnership ap
-
proach to an enterprise GIS is the sharing of its
cost, risk, and—of course—the benefits,” says
De Lai. “Any one of our HRIC partners would
find it very difficult to fund their own system.
Together, we are able to buy into a large enter
-
prise GIS infrastructure, data management
processes, and capacity building.”
The support and interaction between HRIC
and the community are essential, because
sugarcane production in the area is a compli
-
cated process that includes a number of well-
coordinated steps from planting to harvesting.
The process is underpinned by the automatic
collection and transmission of spatial data to
HIP for analysis and decision making.
“Our sugarcane growing and harvesting
procedures require a high level of interde
-
pendence within the community because the
process is not vertically integrated, except for
the milling and transport,” says De Lai. “We
rely a great deal on the growers to provide