The EU Directive that instituted the field crop subsidy scheme requires that the Member States check 5% of the subsidy applications.

To do this, the Belgian Ministry for Agriculture has set up a computerised system to manage and check the subsidy applications.

This system, known as SIGEC from the French for ‘Integrated Management and Verification System’ (Système Intégré de Gestion et de Contrôle), includes a major cartographic component. This feature makes it possible to digitise all of the reported plots of farmland in Belgium (more than 600,000 plots each year) based on complete coverage of the country by orthorectified aerial photographs. These digitised views give the farmers some back-up for filling out their applications and help the Ministry to check the validity of the claims.