UMD GEOG-led NASA Harvest Program Teams up with CropX to Support Sustainable Agriculture

NASA Harvest, NASA’s Food Security and Agriculture Program led by researchers in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland, is teaming up with Israel-based CropX, a global leader in soil analytics for agriculture, to improve farming sustainability through resource conservation and enhanced crop yields.

Combining the power of CropX soil data monitoring and agricultural analytics with NASA’s network of Earth-observing satellites will empower NASA Harvest to deliver critical insights to governments and farmers around the globe in support of informed and science-driven decision making.

“We are in a constant race to produce and supply enough food in order to feed a rapidly growing global population, with finite land and natural resources,” said Inbal Becker-Reshef, program director of NASA Harvest. “NASA Harvest is dedicated to collaborating with top innovators to make the best possible use of our agricultural land and this partnership with CropX unites our space-led vision with on-farm intelligence and results."

NASA has deployed CropX solutions across a group of alfalfa farms in Arizona managed by Integrated Ag Financial (IAF) Investments Group to test and fine-tune the algorithms that will become the foundation of nationwide, and eventually global, agriculture insights. Over a one-year period, the pilot program will quickly establish the parameters for water usage estimates, yield prediction, soil quality and land usage assessments based on multiple crop growing cycles.

“We are delighted to collaborate with CropX and NASA Harvest on this most important deployment,” stated Jon-Michael Nahon, a Senior IAF Managing Partner, “Optimal and sustainable use of farm inputs is crucial to meeting the world’s food challenge.”

“Soil health and nutrient management is at the very root of food security and sustainable agriculture concerns and an accurate understanding of what is actually happening underneath the ground is essential,” said Nadav Liebermann, Chief Technology Officer of CropX. “Our partnership with NASA Harvest will deliver valuable agronomic insights by connecting critical data at different depths underground and form an expansive network of satellites in space. We are looking forward to working with the NASA Harvest team to improve farming decision-making in both developed and undeveloped regions worldwide.”

The new partnership between CropX and NASA Harvest puts collaboration across the public, private and academic sectors into practice. Together, the two organizations plan to quickly scale the program based on learnings from the initial pilot.

About NASA Harvest

Housed within the NASA Applied Sciences Program, NASA Harvest is NASA’s Food Security and Agriculture Program operating as a consortium of leading agricultural experts across the academic, public, private, and NGO sectors. Led by researchers at the University of Maryland and implemented with the support of international partners, NASA Harvest serves to advance the use of satellite Earth observations to benefit both domestic and global food security and environmental resiliency. As a consortium of over 50 partner organizations from across the globe, the NASA Harvest team leverages a vast and diverse array of agricultural remote sensing expertise, food market analysis, and sustainable agriculture knowledge in service of food security worldwide.

About CropX

A global leader in agricultural analytics, CropX is revolutionizing the farm and automating the decision-making process by combining above-ground data sets with real-time soil data. CropX gives farmers an unmatched connection to their soil, offering proprietary soil sensor technology and cloud-based Ag analytics that integrate with irrigation systems. Learn more at www.cropx.com.

About IAF Investments Group
A leader in agriculture investing, IAF Investments applies some of the most advanced technologies in precision irrigation and visual monitoring and detection. The company controls thousands of acres of farmland in the Southwest US where water is a major challenge. In addition to its private land investments, IAF works with local tribes to develop high tech solutions to old problems.