BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 2. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the University of Maryland (UMD)/NASA Harvest have been working in partnership on a pilot project to test remote sensing-based agricultural monitoring and refine its applicability in Kazakhstan, Trend reports via the FAO.
According to FAO, this method can provide valuable insights into crop conditions and production prospects in Kazakhstan.
Along with Kazakhstan, the project is being implemented in Malawi and Namibia and is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The goal of the project is to provide actors in the agriculture sector with advance insights into crop conditions and production prospects. The project team is using a suite of remote sensing-based tools that are intended to help monitor crop conditions and production prospects.
During the presentation of the preliminary results of the pilot project in Astana, FAO showcased a new crop map of the spring wheat crop in Kazakhstan, which is the main cereal grown in the country.
The map was produced using methods developed by the UMD/NASA Harvest and is intended to assist the government in monitoring wheat crop conditions.
Furthermore, FAO also spoke of a yield forecast model that is trained on global datasets but tweaked to capture the specificities of Kazakhstan's agricultural system. The model can produce wheat yield forecasts in advance of the harvest period, giving early indications of potential production outcomes, and providing actors in the agricultural sector time to respond effectively to bumper outputs as well as low harvests, for example, to mitigate adverse effects.
The meeting participants, including representatives of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Agriculture and a selection of GIS experts from universities to startups, were receptive to the results of the pilot project and interested in collaborating with FAO.
Several institutions cited their eagerness to use this type of data, which indicates the potential for this method to be adopted more widely in the future.