When NASA began over sixty years ago, they began looking at ways to monitor agriculture using satellites. It has been 51 years since the launch of the first Landsat satellite, and its partners have mapped agriculture operations worldwide.
Bradley Down is a program manager with NASA. He says that work continues to this day.
“Now our data is getting really down to that farm level where we really are starting to have more and more tools that are relevant at our management level, and at the level that they have to assess policies. And so we said ‘you know, it’s time we have more direct and focused discussions with producers and the AG community because they’re going to be driving the solutions.’ We provide information we need to know what their challenges are, what their tools are so we can integrate our data into what they need,” Down said.
The agency just launched the “Acres Program”, which focuses solely on domestic agriculture needs like climate smart initiatives as well as water management.
NASA works with extension service programs to integrate their data into platforms farmers can access.
Story via NASA
