Satellite images collected by NASA Harvest will be used in conjunction with Agmatix software under a a new partnership. Photo: NASA Harvest

AGTECH business Agmatix has this week announced a partnership with NASA Harvest, the US agency’s global food security and agriculture consortium, to support crop production in a sustainable way at the field level and mitigate the impact of climate change.

A combination of ground-sampling and remote-sensing data will be used to support farmers in their transition toward sustainable agriculture.

The methodology developed within this partnership will track farmer efforts to improve conservation management and guide them to improve their sustainability levels.

“According to the World Economic Forum, sustainable agriculture practices must triple in order to prevent climate change,” Agmatix chief executive officer Ron Baruchi said.

“Currently, adoption is hindered by a lack of consistent and acceptable measurements at scale.

“Our collaboration will promote resilient agriculture beginning with smallholder farms in India and commercial farms in Brazil, and lead to further expansion worldwide.”

NASA Harvest will provide its expertise on agricultural remote-sensing and leverage tools developed by the consortium, which will then be combined with field data from Agmatix and processed using a proprietary artificial intelligence algorithm.

These can help farmers make field-level decisions that impact sustainability most effectively, such as cover-crop selection and fertiliser application.

“NASA Harvest is excited to partner with Agmatix to advance the use of satellite-based information to  help inform on-farm decisions which can ultimately result in increased resilience while reducing waste” NASA Harvest director Inbal Becker-Reshef said.

The NASA Harvest consortium has a geographic emphasis on the US and East Africa, and is affiliated with more than 50 organisations including Bayer, CIMMYT and the Canadian Government.

It is led by the University of Maryland’s Harvest Hub.

Agmatix is based in Israel.

Source: Agmatix, NASA Harvest