Forecasting agricultural productivity to improve agricultural supply chains

Globally, 13.8% of food is lost after harvest on the farm and in transport, storage and processing, amounting to €330 billion a year. By Using EO data for tracking and forecasting agricultural production, the ESA-backed Agri-track aims to improve decision-making in agricultural supply chains and reduce losses.

Source: FAO

Agri-track enables agri-businesses to receive up-to- date crop monitoring and forecasting information using Earth observation (EO) satellite imagery from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 and commercial EO data. Crop- specific monitoring and forecasting data includes regional yield estimates, growth stage, harvest timing, field-level leaf stress estimates and maps inter-seasonal change. Agri-track benefits growers and crop traders as well as NGOS and government by i) providing regular crop production data regardless of the weather for key commercial crops in developing countries and ii) through regional and national crop mapping for market intelligence and food security planning. The product provides agri-businesses with aggregated information in formats they are familiar with (data, alerts, maps) that are compatible with their own corporate or crop management systems, enabling them to make near-real time decisions based on crop intelligence that scales from the field to countrywide.