Imagine farmers have to follow hundreds of EU agricultural rules, and government inspectors have to physically visit farms to check compliance — expensive and slow. RECAP built a cloud platform that uses satellite images and photos farmers take on their phones to automatically flag potential rule violations before inspectors even show up. Think of it like a smart compliance dashboard: satellites watch the fields from above, farmers snap geo-tagged photos as proof, and the system connects the dots to tell both sides where problems might be brewing. It was tested with real authorities and farmers across 5 countries.
Government agencies across Europe spend heavily on physical farm inspections to verify compliance with Common Agricultural Policy rules, yet these visits are slow, expensive, and cannot cover all farms. Farmers themselves struggle to interpret complex regulations and often discover violations only after inspectors arrive — when penalties are already unavoidable.
RECAP built a cloud-based SaaS platform that combines satellite Earth Observation data with farmer-submitted geo-tagged mobile photos to automatically detect potential CAP compliance breaches. The platform includes an open API and SDK for agricultural consultants and developers to build custom add-on services, plus a farmer-facing tool with personalised compliance alerts.
If you are an AgTech company looking to add compliance features to your platform — RECAP developed a cloud-based SaaS with an open API and SDK specifically designed for third-party add-ons. Agricultural consultants and developers can plug into RECAP's satellite and geo-referenced data to build custom compliance services. The system was validated in 5 countries with real public authorities and farmers.
If you are a public authority responsible for monitoring CAP compliance and spending heavily on in-field inspections — RECAP built a platform that correlates satellite remote sensing data with farmer-submitted geo-referenced photos to identify potential breaches automatically. This reduces the need for costly physical inspections while improving transparency. The system was tested in operational environments across 5 countries.
If you are a remote sensing company looking for applied use cases in agriculture — RECAP created methods to extract compliance-relevant features from Earth Observation open data and correlate them with ground-level farmer data. The platform includes an SDK for developers to build services on top of this data layer. With 14 consortium partners and 9 from industry, the technology was built with commercial deployment in mind.
EU contribution data is not available for this project, so specific development costs cannot be estimated. However, RECAP was designed as a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS), which typically means subscription-based pricing rather than large upfront investments. The open API and SDK model also suggests a platform-economy approach where third parties can build and monetize add-ons.
Yes — the system was specifically tested and validated in operational environments across 5 countries (Greece, Spain, Lithuania, Serbia, UK). The platform was designed to handle the high complexity and diversity of CAP obligations, suggesting it can adapt to different national implementations of EU agricultural policy.
The platform was built with an open approach, offering an API and SDK for agricultural consultants and developers to create add-ons. DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL SA, a Greek SME, coordinated the project. Licensing terms would need to be discussed directly with the consortium, but the architecture was explicitly designed for third-party integration.
RECAP uses two main data streams: publicly available Earth Observation satellite data (open data) and user-generated data from farmers via mobile devices, specifically geo-referenced and time-stamped photos. It correlates these with geo-information data already available to public organisations.
The project ran from 2016 to 2018 and is now closed. It was funded as an Innovation Action (IA), which is the EU's closest-to-market funding type. With 9 industry partners and 5 SMEs in the consortium, there was strong commercial interest, but current operational status would need to be verified with the coordinator.
Based on the project objectives, RECAP incorporated security and privacy policies governing access to farmer data on the platform. Consultants could only access data subject to these policies. However, specific GDPR compliance details would need to be confirmed with the project team.
The RECAP consortium of 14 partners across 5 countries is heavily weighted toward industry with 9 commercial partners (64% industry ratio) and 5 SMEs — a strong signal of market intent rather than pure research. Led by DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL SA, a Greek environmental technology SME, the team included only 1 university and 1 research organisation, with the rest being industry players and other organisations. This composition suggests the project was built to produce a deployable product, not academic papers. The geographic spread across Greece, Spain, Lithuania, Serbia, and the UK provided diverse regulatory testing environments for the CAP compliance platform.
DRAXIS ENVIRONMENTAL SA is a Greek environmental technology SME — reach out through their corporate website or LinkedIn for licensing and integration discussions.
Want to explore how RECAP's CAP compliance platform could fit your agricultural technology portfolio? SciTransfer can arrange an introduction to the development team and help you evaluate integration options.
