The Harvest Africa initiative leverages world-class technical expertise, scaling and applying machine learning and EO-based data and tools across East and Southern Africa in addition to supporting operational EO-based agricultural monitoring. We aim to advance innovative satellite-driven methods to produce automated within season crop type and crop-specific condition products that support agricultural assessments. We directly involve national and regional agencies in the development process to ensure smooth transition to the respective government agency or partner.

Remotely-sensed satellite data is especially useful when accurate and near-real-time information is needed quickly, whether in response to acute food insecurity threats like drought and regional conflict or for policy implementation following unforeseen disasters. The NASA Harvest Rapid Agricultural Assessment for Policy Support (RAAPS) Initiative enables consortium partners to quickly respond to emerging priorities and crises by conducting research and building tools to monitor statistics throughout the season. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, increase in severe weather events, ongoing conflicts around the world, and their disruptive affects on agricultural production, crop harvests, food markets, and supply chains, we have developed several free online tools to help users perform various agricultural analyses.

Visit the Harvest2Market dashboard to explore agricultural supply chains and food market information.

Visit the Agrometeorological (AGMET) Earth Observation Indicators dashboard to explore environmental impacts on in-season crop development and current crop conditions.

Visit the NASA Harvest COVID-19 Dashboard to explore the impacts of the pandemic on the agricultural sector.

The NASA Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture (SARA) Initiative is a public-good, multi-stakeholder, innovative pre-competitive forum for researchers and private industry to come together to advance Earth observations-based tools, integrative methods, and knowledge about adoption and impacts of sustainable and regenerative agriculture techniques. SARA is Led and coordinated by NASA Harvest through philanthropic contributions to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation.

Visit the SARA website to learn more and support this exciting new endeavor!