Area in northeast Kansas, on the left is an image of crops grown in 2018, and on the right shows crops grown in the same fields. Image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory – image by Michala Garrison, using Cropland data from USDA NASS and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
This week we’re focused on how satellite imagery can help support farming. We’re currently visiting Agricultural Shows as part of a project to understand how satellite imagery is being used in agriculture in the UK and were drawn to a couple of articles published in the last week.
Space4Climate Project
Pixalytics is currently leading a consortium delivering the Space4Climate Market Breakthrough Funding (MBF) Phase 2 project, which is discussing with those stakeholders involved in delivering the ‘the last mile’ of innovation to farms and understand how they are using satellite imagery to support growers cope with climate resilience.
The stakeholders are those involved in interpreting data and providing advice/support to farmers. Alongside the farmers themselves, this group includes machine providers and agronomy services supporting farmers with field crop production and soil management. Together with talking to consultants, agritech centres, and supporters of innovation such as agricultural colleges.
Environment Systems, RSAC Ltd, and Ian Encke Consulting are working alongside Pixalytics on the project and gathering a variety of qualitative and quantitative data on the current position, alongside the potential barriers for increasing use of satellite data in this last mile and how this could be best supported.
Last week we attended the Yealmpton Agriculture Show, which was our first experience of such an event, which was very busy and high energy environment with all the animals, demonstrations and exhibitors. This week we’re off to the Honiton Agriculture Show, while other consortia members are going to other events and starting the one-to-one interviews as we gather information.
If you work in farming or provide advice or support to farmers, we’d love to hear your views on the use of satellite data in the sector – it will only take a minute, or two, to answers a few questions on our survey here. It’s an anonymous survey, so personal, or contact, details needed.
If you’re interested in discussing this further with us, please get in touch.
Satellite Data Demonstrates Benefits of Crop Rotation
Given the visits we’re currently undertaking, our attention was caught by an article on NASA’s Earth Observatory from Adam Voiland describing research through NASA’s Harvest program about how crop rotation could help farmers increase yields.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University, used satellite data and machine learning to analyse the effect of crop rotation on a large scale in real-world conditions across multiple countries. The findings of the paper ‘Evaluating crop rotations around the world using satellite imagery and causal machine learning’ by Kluger, Tommaso, and Lobell, published on arxiv.org, confirmed that generally crop rotation has a positive impact on yields by minimizing pressure from pests and weeds, keeping soil microbial communities healthy, and retaining soil fertility with less use of fertilizer.
However, the level of yield improvement is dependent on crops grown. One example given compared to growing the same crop each year:
- Growing corn followed by soybeans, or soybeans followed by spring wheat had significant yield increases of about 8 percent.
- Growing soybeans or winter wheat before corn saw a smaller yield increases of 2.5 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.
- Growing soybeans followed by winter wheat saw a 12 percent decrease in yields – although it was felt this result could have been due to delayed winter wheat planting.
The researchers also found that local weather conditions have an impact, and that crop rotation had improved yields in rainier conditions for corn, soybeans, and wheat; believed to be because rainy conditions bring more pest and weed pressures that are eased by rotation. Similarly, rotation generated improved yields in warmer conditions.
The research was undertaken using Landsat data and included the Cropland Data Layer that is derived from Landsat observations.
Market Size for Agriculture Services
Also issued this week was the report ‘Global Digital Soil Mapping Platforms & Applications Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Application (Agriculture Cooperatives, Government and Research Institutes, Agribusiness Companies, Others), Product Type (Drone Scouting, Mobile Scouting, Satellite Imagery)- Market Outlook And Industry Analysis 2034’ by InsightAce Analytic Pvt. Ltd.
Digital soil mapping helps growers better understand the soil types, nutrient content, and water levels, to enable them to make the right choices at the right times in terms of planting, harvesting, adding nutrients and watering. While small scale spatial resolution is very helpful to individual farmers, courser assessments can be used to support land use and land cover mapping, understanding impacts of climate change and other environmental impacts.
The report describes how the Global Digital Soil Mapping Platforms & Applications Market is currently valued at approximately US$ 249 million and is expected to grow by 10% annually over the next decade to over US$ 700 million. These numbers show the potential for how satellite services could be developed to support agriculture.
Conclusion
Given everything that is happening around the world, ensuring growers are given the best information to maximise their yields is becoming increasingly important. Satellite data can help provide some of this support and it will be exciting to see how this can be enhanced in the coming years.
