In 1987, Damien Lepoutre – with support from the School of Agriculture of Purpan, France – officially registered GEOSYS as a company in Toulouse, France. He envisioned a company devoted entirely to agriculture by addressing business problems with remote sensing and GIS technologies. At this time, one farmer provided food for approximately 76 people; and Landsat 5 was in orbit, transmitting images to a relay satellite and the relay satellite downloaded the images to the ground. Ag tech was in its infancy.
By 1989, GEOSYS had developed proprietary software, which allowed us to digitally manage different image formats simultaneously. Nothing like this existed prior to this time, but GEOSYS needed a graphic interface to meet growing business needs. So, to digitize all the imagery, maps were placed on a table for an operator to follow the lines with a mouse to digitize the information.
Along with other advanced technologies, this process allowed GEOSYS to manage larger territories for projects, such as:
- The National Forest Inventory in France to create a database of forest resources,
- The Water Bassin Authority to solve water resource conflicts between farmers and the city of Paris,
- Implementing a new method to estimate Europe’s crop production for the European Commission,
- Creating a Land Parcel Identification System for Romania, which aided the country in becoming a member of the European Union; just to name a few.
Thirty years later, one farmer produces food for approximately 155 people; and Landsat 8 is in orbit with hundreds of other earth observation satellites. Ag tech is booming and GEOSYS is a global industry leader.
We continue to harness the latest technologies while using advanced, real-time satellite imagery and weather data to provide customers with exclusive tools to turn data into educated action. While we take this moment to reflect on our roots, we remain focused on future evolutions for GEOSYS.
To our customers, partners and employees: Thank you for helping us reach this milestone. Join us on LinkedIn and Twitter for more 30th Anniversary updates throughout the year.
