Posted on October, 21, 2021 at 09:11 am
Edrick Bmambale is a field extension officer who works with farmers in southwestern Uganda. He drives from field to field by motorcycle — but now, through a partnership with the U.S. space agency, his helmet is affixed with a camera that links crop data to geospatial imagery.
NASA Harvest is the agency’s food security and agriculture program, and Helmets Labeling Crops is a new ground data collection project in Uganda and Kenya.
Catherine Cheney reports that “advancements in remote sensing, cloud computing, and machine learning are leading earth observation data to play an increasingly central role in agriculture.” But while these technologies are revolutionizing agriculture in many parts of the world, their applications remain out of reach for many smallholder farmers.
Helmets Labeling Crops collects huge amounts of imagery and then uses machine learning to recognize the crops pictured. This data is turned into crop type maps, which can help farmers understand how their small plot of land compares to surrounding areas, recognize patterns, and make predictions for the future.
As data and analytics tools become more available, turning them into meaningful policies and plans requires more technical expertise and institutional capacity, says Catherine Nakalembe, the Africa program director under NASA Harvest.
“You need computers that actually work. You need internet. You need data scientists. And I don’t know how many governments are willing to pay data scientists what they pay ministers. But that’s what data scientists are paid,” she says.
Source: DEVEX