Most of that early work sourced "the good images" from air survey photographs.
Early tech leaders (ERMapper, LizardTech, famously fought it out over "infinite" image formats with "unlimited" resolution) in Earth resource mapping that integrated air, sat, geophysical, etc. data absolutely had significant members that came from farming families and retired to farm ownership.
"Running a successful farm" has a high business and tech element these days, and certainly did in the 1980s, growing ever since.
There are overlapping skillsets here, it's entirely possible to be able to fly a cropduster or drape lowlevel air survey lines, higher photographic runs, and understand, run, and own a farm, and have some mathematical and programming chops.
Unsurprisingly a number of those pioneers had overlapping skills.
Early tech leaders (ERMapper, LizardTech, famously fought it out over "infinite" image formats with "unlimited" resolution) in Earth resource mapping that integrated air, sat, geophysical, etc. data absolutely had significant members that came from farming families and retired to farm ownership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LizardTech,_Inc._v._Earth_Reso....
"Running a successful farm" has a high business and tech element these days, and certainly did in the 1980s, growing ever since.
There are overlapping skillsets here, it's entirely possible to be able to fly a cropduster or drape lowlevel air survey lines, higher photographic runs, and understand, run, and own a farm, and have some mathematical and programming chops.
Unsurprisingly a number of those pioneers had overlapping skills.