Satellite imagery analysis for automated global food security forecasting

Descartes Labs’ first-of-its-kind overhead imagery analysis, monitoring and forecasting platform provides: 1. Analysis-ready time sequences of global, persistent multi-sensor public and commercial satellite imagery; 2. Machine learning algorithms for rapid development of solutions; and 3. Dissemination of solutions as continually updated high-level business intelligence products via open standard web APIs. Our initial product addresses economically significant non-food crops (corn, soybeans), and is currently in commercial trials with top-tier US agricultural and financial companies, and with NGOs for humanitarian and environmental applications. We now propose to build and demonstrate a next generation food security product, analyzing, monitoring and forecasting wheat crop across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where food security, population growth, and environmental stress intersect with and drive political instability, migration and conflict. Our product will also support commodities traders, farm seed/chemical/equipment suppliers, and international crop insurance. Our proposed Phase II system will produce: 1. Timely (>30-days pre-harvest) alerts to food production failures, 2. Multi-temporal/sensor/modality (EO/IR/SAR) signatures for wheat in MENA, 3. Signatures for wheat crop failure modes, including Uganda99 wheat rust disease. 4. OPTION: Expansion to Rice, Sorghum and then Millet, and/or other geographies.