Jamie Bennet
Planet Labs and NASA Harvest have formed a partnership to create an assessment tool for use in anticipating and mitigating global food shortages and famines.
The agreement involves the use of Planet Labs’ satellite and other publicly available datasets, which will be analyzed by NASA’s food security and agriculture program, the company said Thursday.
NASA Harvest previously used Planet Labs’ satellite images last year in assessing the impact of the war in Ukraine on the country’s crop production. Researchers generated a crop type classification map with 94 percent accuracy to monitor frontline agricultural activity.
Under the new commercial partnership, Planet Labs and NASA Harvest will scale the Ukraine pilot and conduct regional and global assessments. They plan to share the resulting tool with other governments, non-governmental organizations, and multilateral institutions around the world.
“The world’s food security is at a moment of enormous uncertainty – triggered not only by the war in Ukraine, but by many other serious challenges, especially those linked to climate,” said Andrew Zolli, chief impact officer at Planet. “The combination of real-time satellite imagery and sophisticated analytics can illuminate many types of risks to our global food systems, helping us adapt agricultural practices, adjust global supply chains, and mitigate risks to poor and vulnerable communities.”
