Esteban J. Copati

Accurate crop production data is a fundamental pillar that helps reducing uncertainly and volatility in the agricultural domestic and international market. With this information the Grain Exchange helps different actors in the agricultural chain, such as producers, traders, seed companies, market analyst, policy makers, into their day to day decision making. For that reason, since the 2016 the Grain Exchange has joined different teams of University of Maryland specialists that are working on projects related to the study of summer and winter crop areas, as well as crop yield assessments by analyzing satellite images. 

Finally, the Grain Exchange hopes that NASA Harvest will help to develop different objective methodologies to improve planted area estimation using Remote Sensing technologies. Since 2001/02 season our Agricultural Estimate Department has been collecting and analyzing variables such us planting and harvesting progresses, phenological development, weekly assessments on crop and soil moisture condition all along the crop season and harvested yields in main important crops in Argentina (corn, soybean, sunflower and wheat). The Grain Exchange are a non-profitable organization and an open source of information and believe that this database could be used to calibrate new methodologies of satellite imagery analysis in order to improve the accuracy of its final results.