As the growing season progresses in Ukraine, NASA Harvest scientists mapped winter cereals and rapeseed across the country. Monitoring agricultural production during wartime is crucial to ensure food security and prevent global shortages, which can lead to widespread hunger and additional social unrest.

NASA Harvest teamed up with the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM), the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to hold a comprehensive four-day training session aimed at enhancing the agricultural monitoring capabilities of several African national agricultural ministries.

Meet NASA Harvest's Alana Ginsburg! Alana is a research assistant with the NASA Harvest Africa Initiative who graduated from the University of Maryland this past spring. Her work with Harvest involves analyzing satellite data to improve insight into agricultural conditions across Africa. She has also worked with meteorologists at the National Weather Service as a NOAA Hollings Scholar and conducted research on microplastic contamination in local waterways.

NASA Harvest is working with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to evaluate and enable the use of remote sensing to develop agricultural statistics in Latin America. The specialists have observed a frequent use of remote sensing information, despite significant heterogeneity in usage related to access and training.

NASA Harvest researchers met with Ukrainian officials at a UN FAO and European Bank of Reconstruction and Development meeting in Rome to discuss how remote sensing can help the monitoring of land use throughout the country and provide market transparency as the country remains a major agricultural exporter.

NASA Harvest's US-focused sister consortium, NASA Acres, was featured in a recent NPR article highlighting the work they've achieved since their launch one year ago. NASA Acres aims to improve decisions on land use planning, resource management, and agricultural yield modeling across the US agricultural sector.