Planet Labs PBC, a number one supplier of day by day Earth knowledge and insights, and NASA Harvest, the Federal House Company’s international meals safety and agriculture program, right this moment introduced a partnership to assist a joint meals safety and agricultural monitoring resolution. The presentation goals to offer policy-level agricultural monitoring and assessments of potential threats to international meals safety.
Facilitated by the College of Maryland and the College of Strasbourg, the present will mix Planet Earth satellite tv for pc knowledge and different publicly out there datasets with the analytical experience of a joint NASA Harvest crew—creating an evaluation device that may play a key position in anticipating and avoiding meals. shortages and famines.
This work was first piloted to observe fields in Ukraine in 2022 to trace frontline agricultural exercise and assess the influence of the conflict on crop manufacturing. Iterating this course of, and constructing on NASA Harvest’s present public sector expertise and Planet’s industrial choices, work is now being expanded to conduct regional and international assessments. The answer will probably be provided to nationwide governments, multilateral establishments, NGOs and different events all over the world.
“The world’s meals safety goes via a second of giant uncertainty – not simply due to the conflict in Ukraine, however due to many different critical challenges, significantly these associated to local weather,” stated Andrew Zoli, Planet’s chief influence officer.
“From drought in Somalia to floods in Pakistan, the mixture of real-time satellite tv for pc imagery and cutting-edge analytics can make clear the numerous kinds of dangers to our international meals techniques, serving to us to adapt agricultural practices, regulate international provide chains, and mitigate dangers to our meals techniques. Poor households and susceptible communities are uncovered to it.”
For many years, the NASA Harvest crew has been growing modern satellite-based applied sciences for monitoring commodity crops reminiscent of wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice. The crew additionally collects and analyzes environmental, financial and social science knowledge to create a whole image of the excellent meals panorama.
“This effort performs a key position in a broader NASA Harvest initiative to offer fast agricultural assessments to assist insurance policies within the face of meals safety and market threats,” stated Inbal Bekr Rechev, NASA Harvest Program Administrator, referring to the pilot venture.
“This stage of understanding can significantly profit different organizations to observe and predict potential points of their areas, transferring us from analysis to influence,” Baker-Reshef continued.
“It was essential to each of our establishments that we make these analyzes extra broadly out there with a purpose to enhance decision-making associated to agriculture all over the world, benefiting from the unparalleled excessive spatial and temporal decision that Planet knowledge supplies.”
Whereas this marks the primary industrial relationship between Planet and NASA Harvest, the pair has a well-established historical past of influence and science-related initiatives. The collaborations grew out of NASA’s SmallSat Industrial Knowledge Acquisition (CSDA) program, below which Planet has been offering knowledge to NASA scientists and federally funded researchers since 2018.
For instance, Planet and NASA Harvest have supported the federal government of Togo with meals safety reduction efforts associated to COVID-19 by making a farmland map for your entire nation, which is delivered inside 10 days of receiving a request, permitting the federal government to rapidly mobilize to make sure meals safety. throughout a world pandemic.