Fecha de publicación: 22/06/2000 Fuente: Wipo "precision farming" Systems and methods are provided for directly linking a harvest environment using precision farming techniques to the marketplace. It is a feature of this invention that properties of crops are evaluated 'on-the-move', during the harvest thereof, and are made known to users in the harvest environment to enable the real-time transaction for the sale of these crops. In a preferred environment, crops are harvested from an agricultural field in the harvest environment (232) with a combine having an auger section thereon. A plurality of properties of the crops are evaluated on-the-move (234) by flowing the harvested crops through the auger section and over an optical device. The optical device utilizes light reflected from the crops to determine the properties. Thereafter, the marketplace is searched (236) with a computing configuration aboard the combine for a market seeking the crop properties. If a market is found, a wireless communication link between the harvest environment and the market is used to transact for a sale of the crops (242). The properties of the crops are correlated to a location in the agricultural field to expand the knowledge base about the field to enhance future precision farming operations.