NASA Harvest Meeting in Ispra Highlights Synergies Across Major GEOGLAM Contributory Programs

At a side meeting held during the GEOGLAM Operational Earth Observations User Requirements Meeting (April 17-18, Ispra, Italy), NASA Harvest leadership highlighted the importance of linking activities across major GEOGLAM contributory programs. GEOGLAM and Harvest have shared partners, priorities, visions and objectives to ensure the uptake of EO in support of agriculture and food security. The purpose of this meeting was to capitalize on GEOGLAM's maturity, to better enable Harvest-GEOGLAM to work as a cohesive community with differing mechanisms for funding activities and priorities.

The team and participants discussed potential synergies and scoped out opportunities for collaboration with GEOGLAM partners – in Europe and beyond – in Harvest.  Participants also included representatives from ministries of Tanzania, Uganda and other East African organizations and explored use cases in East Africa in the context of GEOGLAM, AfriGAM, and Harvest. The event leveraged attendance of multiple partners, collaborators, affiliates, and related groups in Harvest and GEOGLAM. 

Participants determined that there is both a need and the capacity for better coordination and leveraging of activities. Working through the GEOGLAM framework, coordination with Harvest will achieve stronger results for the remote sensing community and both organizations.