Utilizing Satellites to Aid Farmers in Coping with Climate Change

The timing of the harvest is a critical choice for winemakers, as it can greatly impact the taste of the wine. If done too early, the wine may turn out bitter, while harvesting too late can result in excessive sweetness. This delicate equilibrium is now being disrupted by the climate crisis.

In France, global warming has been wreaking havoc on this ancient equation for some time now. In wine-growing regions across the country, the seasons have shortened – harvest day in the Châteauneuf-de-Pape appellation, one of the most prestigious appellations, has moved almost three weeks longer since 1960. At the same time, plant diseases are appearing in areas never seen before. now drying the vines in others.

In order to adapt, old habits are replaced more and more by new ones. In this case, accurate data to monitor vine progress and health in a rapidly warming environment. According to startups such as Ticinum Aerospace and TerraNIS, winegrowers are using satellite technology to harvest the right grapes at the right time.

“Sometimes producers don’t collect data on the grapes, or they do, but it’s not easily stored, or they don’t know from which area they collected the samples,” said Daniele De Vecchi, director of the Ticinum Aerospace for Saturnalia project. information platform for the evaluation of viticulture plants. “Now the wine industry can make decisions based on data. It’s not that romantic, but I think it’s the only way to go.”

Marc Tondiriaux added that more French farmers will join. He is the president and founder of Terra NIS. The company offers agricultural data based on satellite and drone images. “Just ten years ago, the key customers for these applications were mostly in Bordeaux,” Tondiriaux said. “Now we’re seeing more of it in the southern regions.”

But while this technology has already been adopted in winemaking, it may soon play a more important role in adapting agriculture in general.

After decades of development, the number of people suffering from malnutrition has started to move in the wrong direction. Global warming, supply chain disruptions associated with extreme weather conditions, and even nutrient depletion due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide are driving the global food crisis. These trends are particularly severe in regions more prone to crop-killing heat, with many countries on the brink of famine.

According to the British charity Oxfam, in ten climate destinations from Guatemala to Afghanistan, acute hunger has more than doubled in six years. But cutting-edge satellite sensor technology could play a big role in slowing it down. Experts envision a future where farmers can manage fields based mostly on free Earth observation data on crop diseases, pest infestations, nutrient requirements, water stress, ideal harvest time and quality assessment.

Tondiriaux said combining recommendations based on orbital or drone data with GPS-guided agricultural machinery could transform farming. In the process, it might just prevent the worst of global warming for farmers. And as a bonus, such technology has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector by 13 percent, according to an April report by the World Economic Forum.

According to the report, the market for satellite data in agriculture will almost double by 2030 to almost a billion dollars. It calculates the value of using a $400 million satellite to detect pests and pathogens to prevent crop loss, and it estimates that water use will decrease by nearly 10% by leveraging insights from space.

Satellite technology has long been used to help governments and futures markets estimate scales, such as the size of the future corn crop in the United States or the size of wheat in Ukraine. But newer technology has the ability to help individual farmers measure and expand their own yield potential.

Satellites from NASA, the European Space Agency and private companies such as San Francisco-based Planet provide images of Earth from several bands of the electromagnetic spectrum.

When sunlight hits a planet’s surface, certain wavelengths are reflected back based on the material the light hits and its physical condition. Chlorophyll, which plants use to make food, absorbs a lot of visible light, while the cellular structure of a leaf reflects near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths.

Sensors and cameras measure the strength of the waves reflected back from the Earth. A high level of reflected NIR light combined with low reflectance in the visible region indicates dense vegetation such as forest or healthy crops. A small difference in the reflectance of the two spectral bands indicates sparse vegetation, such as a desert or bare soil.

The nuances of these relationships have proven to be reliable indicators of nitrogen content, major plant nutrients, and plant biomass, leaf area, and chlorophyll content—all related to soil water content. Their measure is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which is one of the most commonly used satellite-based measurements in agriculture. Researchers from TerraNIS and Ecole d’Ingénieurs de PURPAN, a research institute in Toulouse, France, supported the accuracy of the data and showed a strong correlation between nitrogen concentrations taken from leaf samples and analyzes from satellite images.

With each pixel in the image representing an area as small as half a square meter, this satellite data can be overlaid on a map of the field, allowing fertilizer to be applied only where it is needed. For example, a low NDVI as the crop approaches harvest time would indicate the need for nitrogen fertilizer. “We’ve treated crops like all soil is exactly the same, when we know for sure that’s not the case,” said Misty Tucker, Planet’s director of agriculture. “Satellite data helps us manage our fields at a much more detailed level.”

If such technology became widely available, the saved resources, avoided emissions and preserved crops in a changing climate landscape could have a significant impact on both slowing global warming and protecting the food supply.

Decision makers are starting to see the light. The European Union is changing its Common Agricultural Policy with satellite tracking in mind to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer use and ocean dead zones. In the US, the Precision Agriculture Satellite Connectivity Act forces the Federal Communications Commission to consider whether changes to satellite communications rules could help precision agriculture, and to make recommendations to Congress if so. It was approved by the parliament in April.

NASA’s suite of Earth-observing instruments already help “provide both global and local predictions of water availability, crop health and production rates,” said Karen St. Germain, NASA’s director of earth sciences. Its designed SBG instrument can push the ball forward. ESA’s Sentinel satellites, on the other hand, have a combination of spatial and temporal resolution and wide bandwidth that have proven particularly useful for satellite data providers to the agricultural industry.

“The crop is always changing,” said Sara Antognelli, head of research and development at Italian satellite data company Agricolus, which said it can work with 140 crops — from grapes to grains. “So you have to be quick to spot problems. Sentinel’s different bands that detect both soil moisture and vegetation health are very rare.

TerraNIS-E.I.P. The study found that Sentinel’s freely available data is more accurate in estimating nitrogen status than even higher-resolution data from satellites that charge for access. And new instruments can bring even more insights.

Of course, satellites can’t do everything. Findings often need to be confirmed on the spot, and overreliance on orbital data can lead to carelessness, warns José Manuel Amigo, an expert in hyperspectral imaging and chemical analytics at the Basque Science Foundation in Bilbao, Spain.

“Remote sensing is a wonderful discipline that helps farmers in many situations,” he said. Yet too often assumptions are made and limitations are rejected. “Data processing is not easy, and correlating parameters to real problems” may be too far of a leap. “Researchers forget that the answers they give farmers must be followed by intensive validation and robust chemical explanation.”

Still, Kaitlin Gold, a professor of plant pathology at Cornell University in Geneva, New York, said she’s excited about the possibility of spotting crop diseases early enough to do something about it. “A changing climate is expanding the suitable range of invasive pathogens,” he said, while heat and drought are making the plant “much more susceptible to opportunistic diseases.”

The satellites enable “high-quality risk assessment that allows for successful early intervention,” Gold said.