One of the first steps in precision agriculture is to obtain aerial images of an area of interest to determine soil units and management zones. Aerial and remote sensing information, digital elevation models and other spatial data are often inexistent in planning offices in Latin American countries and, up to now, enhancement and modifications have not been integrated into smaller scaled planning operation such as farming. High resolution remote sensing images from scanning satellites like Quickbird, Ikonos or others are very expensive. One of the ordering requirements from satellite image distributors is to purchase images for large area (i.e., minimum of 500 km2 for satellite Ikonos) at an average price of USD $ 27/km2. In addition, these aerial images are not always available for the area of interest or for a given period. If that is the case, the remote sensing images will be acquired during the next passage of the satellite over the area, occasioning delays of up to several weeks (depending on the region). There is no guaranty that the satellite image at that time will have clear ground visibility. In the humid tropics, this can be a major constrain as cloud cover is often a limiting factor.

This paper presents two inexpensive solutions to obtain high resolution aerial color photographs using a small urethane hydrogen balloon (volume of 5.1 m3 for a lifting power of 3.2kg) and a powered paraglider equipped with consumer-level digital cameras(12.1 and 15.2 megapixels). The aerial surveys are carrying out at an altitude of 600 to 1,500 m selecting days when cloud cover is nil and when crop and soil are in desired conditions. The high resolution shots are taken at given time intervals and angles to allow identification of management areas and reconstruction of accurate 3-D ground models during post processing.