USDA and NASA Partner to Improve Agricultural Data
By Erica Shaffer
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and NASA have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to integrate NASA’s Earth observation, geospatial analytics, and statistical methodologies in support of agricultural statistics. Both agencies anticipate that this collaboration will enhance data quality and provide U.S. farmers and ranchers with access to cutting-edge technologies.
Key Areas of Cooperation:
- Mission/Data Alignment: Regular technical exchanges to align USDA statistical needs with NASA Earth science missions and data products, such as satellite observations, model outputs, and derived geophysical variables.
- Data Access & Infrastructure: Discussions on scalable access patterns to NASA archives, cloud-native geospatial formats, APIs, and workflow orchestration to enable USDA production operations.
- Methodology & Validation: Joint technical reviews of algorithms for crop condition indicators, yield models, planted/harvested area estimation, and disaster impact assessment, including methods for bias correction, uncertainty quantification, and validation using statistically sound frames and ground data.
This collaboration is in response to USDA’s efforts to improve data collection, following inconsistent crop reports that led to a decline in producers’ survey participation.
"American farmers are the best in the world, and they deserve any solution we can leverage, even when it is out of this world," said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins.