USDA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have signed a new memorandum of understanding to help researchers find ways to improve crop yields, manage water and manage diseases.

The agencies will work on research gaps of importance to the agricultural community using up-to-date technology.

Such agreements typically last five years and “set the table” for both agencies, identifying opportunities to collaborate, Brad Doorn, NASA program manager for water resources and agriculture, told the Capital Press.

Soil moisture will be a particular focus, he said. NASA will provide monitoring capabilities developed in the last 10 years to farmers.

The agency also wants to make information more valuable to farmers and others in response to climate change, with better weather forecasting and more effective management of fresh water, he said.

Doorn is part of NASA’s earth science division.

“We’re the guys who look at the Earth from space,” he said.

Farmers are the ones who touch the Earth and see how it changes each season and each year, Doorn said. 

“Agriculture also plays a large role in NASA’s space programming. A big part of that has been how you grow food, how are we going to sustain ourselves,” he said.

The partnership began in the early 1970s, when a wheat famine in the Soviet Union disrupted the global food supply. The U.S. was unaware of the famine at first, and worked to better understand agriculture using satellite data and remote sensing.

“That ability, over the decades, has really stabilized our understanding of the major commodities and the food supply,” Doorn said. “It isn’t perfect, but it allows us to breathe a little bit and the trade system to flow a bit.”

For Doorn, the best part of the collaboration is watching the agriculture industry figure out how to use the data NASA supplies.

“You see light bulbs popping up all over,” he said.

NASA and USDA want to inspire the next generation of farmers and researchers. The technologies come together, whether in space or agriculture, Doorn said.

“It shows the agriculture community (that) it’s really high-tech, Space Age stuff going on,” he said. “On the space side, (it allows) for those in our space programs to see, ‘Wow, this really does have an impact.’

“What we’re doing right now isn’t just some science fiction stuff,” he said. “We’re doing things now using information from these satellites, making decisions today.”

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/index.html