GOES-17 image of Earth’s Western Hemisphere acquired on May 20, 2018, using the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI). Image courtesy of NOAA/NASA.

The role space technology and remote sensing plays in the world, together with how it supports innovation and advancement were highlighted in several reports and articles this week. We’re going to be looking at those related to agricultural and innovation sectors.

Agriculture and Agrifood

Firstly, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released an article titled ‘Five ways science, technology and innovation are helping to transform the world’s agrifood systems’. This notes that by 2050 the population of the planet will have exceeded nine billion and the food production and supply system will need to evolve to ensure that the population is fed effectively and efficiently in a resilient and sustainable manner. The article highlights five ways in which science, technology and innovation can support such a transformation:

1.  Using digital applications in agrifood systems by widening the application of remote sensing, mobile phone apps, artificial intelligence and blockchain to help small and rural food producers get the benefits of these technologies will promote the sustainability of food production.
2. Using innovation to reclaim underutilized space for urban agriculture as it is forecast that two-thirds of the planet’s population will live in this environment. Innovation of resource use such as vertical planting, hydroponics, and reutilizing under used space in town and cities will help improve food production in these environments.
3. Reducing distances and enhancing access to services through the internet such as improving communication between producers and buyers to enhance decision making and value chains.
4. Developing irradiated vaccines for animals to control and prevent numerous animal diseases. Irradiation technology supports safe vaccine development as it doesn’t require the chemicals usually required to deactivate viruses.
5. Upgrading value chains with better technology to support their sustainability across all levels and enable the most effective way to link produces and consumers.

Space technology leads or supports a number of these elements and it is important for the industry to continue to develop and innovate for economic, social and environmental drivers.

Supporting the agrifood sector with satellite remote sensing was also raised last week by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) who highlighted that a minimum of two satellites were required to guarantee continuous coverage of India’s agricultural regions.  These satellites would provide data for applications such as crop forecasting, pesticide application, irrigation, soil data, and drought information. ISRO feel there are gaps in the Earth Observation capabilities for India including discontinuity in missions, low utilisation of available data, technology gaps and absence of a streamlined data processing and dissemination solution. They also proposed the establishment of an Earth Observation Council in India to address these issues, similar approaches have been adopted by other countries, such as the UK where we have a DEFRA Earth Observation Centre of Excellence focused on environmental applications.

Innovation

Last week, a collaborative report led by the European Patent Office, together with the European Space Policy Institute and European Space Agency (ESA) was released titled ‘Space-borne sensing and green applications’. The report focused on examining global patent filing trends in the domain of green applications of space-borne sensing between 2001 and 2020. For the purposes of the report, green applications were described as patents that supported either:

• Understanding the modelling, predicting and action on climate change.
• Enabling the green transition of economies and industries into more sustainable, efficient and less polluting activities.
• Protecting and preserving the biodiversity, ecosystems and the environment.

The analysis of the patent filings found a number of trends:

• Green applications of space-borne sensing increased by 1800% over the course of period studied, whereas patents in all technology fields only rose by 440% in the same timescale.
• Unsurprisingly, for regular blog readers, China led the over patent filings, followed by the United States. While European filing activity was limited with France, Germany and the UK leading the way.
• Software patents were much higher than those for hardware.

The report also identified a number of challenges, and these are remarkably similar to some of the issues described by ISRO above. The key challenges identified here were:

• Driving user uptake of data and services.
• Sustained public investments in the space sector.
• Creating an environment for business innovation for green applications within the space sector.

ESA themselves are trying to encourage such developments with its ESA’s Agenda 2025– with ESA’s Space for a Green Future goal aimed at accelerating the use of space to mitigate climate change and enhance quality of life

These reports highlight, again, the potential benefits space technology can offer the world and why the industry is a growing and an exciting to be involved with.