By providing a more amenable environment for pests that destroy crops, climate change reduces agricultural yields and increases food insecurity. To combat the threat, farms often use excessive and ineffective chemicals that degrade the soil, further diminishing their output.
Growing practices for palm oil, the most widely traded vegetable oil worldwide, have been linked to deforestation. Ecuador, the third largest palm oil producer in Latin America, is seeking to improve the agricultural practices of its palm farms to prevent further environmental degradation and enhance the income of small-scale producers.
Under an agreement with the United Nations Development Programme, the InterAmerican Development Bank partnered with the Pulte Institute and SATagro to monitor crop development in near real-time to determine the impact of environmental threats and agricultural interventions, producing data to improve decision-making and productivity.
Core Affiliated and Keough School Faculty Paul Winters and Alejandro Estefan oversee the initiative. Its goal is to reduce deforestation and crop degradation while promoting conservation and sustainable use of the Amazonian landscape.
“The data is used for mapping, showing farmers where to apply fertilizers via the SATagro app,” Estefan, assistant professor of development economics, said. “It is an environmentally friendly way of increasing crop yield.”
SATagro, a digital agriculture start-up that works with small-scale farmers, uses satellite imagery from NASA and the tools of traditional Geographic Information Systems to assist growers. The SATagro team distributes information capsules that provide recommendations to achieve the project’s goals.
“Farmers can also fertilize, plant, and spray with unprecedented precision, using dynamically generated prescription maps which are compatible with a range of agro machinery,” Estefan said. “SATagro’s imagery allows for field-level detail that was previously unavailable. With our help, palm oil farms are seeing much better outcomes and significantly cutting their nitrogen fertilizer use.”