Sustainable agriculture lands new partner alongside NASA Harvest

NASA’s global Food Security and Agriculture Consortium aims to support sustainable agriculture and crop production

Agmatix, a start-up agricultural technology (AgTech) business, is partnering with NASA Harvest. The announcement marks a huge win for the sustainable agriculture movement.

The start-up, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, specializes in turning agronomic big data into powerful models and insights. Using these, NASA Harvest can better fulfil its mission: to support sustainable crop production at the field level.

All this seeks to mitigate the impact on the climate crisis. “According to the World Economic Forum, sustainable agriculture practices must triple in order to prevent climate change,” commented Ron Baruchi, CEO of Agmatix.

“Currently, adoption is hindered by a lack of consistent and acceptable measurements at scale. Our collaboration will promote resilient agriculture beginning with smallholder farms in India and commercial farms in Brazil, and lead to further expansion worldwide.”

A combination of ground sampling and remote sensing data will support farmers in their transition toward sustainable agriculture. Agmatix and NASA Harvest’s twin methodology will track agricultural workers’ efforts. In doing so, the parnters will improve conservation management and ultimately guide them to improve their sustainability levels.

“NASA Harvest is excited to partner with Agmatix to advance the use of satellite-based information to help inform on-farm decisions which can ultimately result in increased resilience while reducing waste,” said Inbal Becker-Reshef, Director of NASA Harvest.

The US-based organization run by Inbal will provide expertise on agricultural remote sensing and leverage tools developed by the consortium. AI software will then read the results alongside Agmatix’s field data.

Data-based insights created by the AI will improve sustainability through like cover crop selection and fertilizer application.