Study: Satellite data can help transform food systems (DOI: 10.1126/science.aee1344)
For decades, satellites have helped scientists observe Earth's changing landscapes. Now, they could also help answer one of agriculture's most pressing questions: How can the world produce more food while reducing its environmental impact?
New research by Meha Jain, University of Michigan associate professor of environment and sustainability, examines the impacts of environmental change on agricultural production and strategies that farmers may adopt to reduce negative effects.
She says that high-resolution satellite imagery, combined with new analytical tools, can help governments, policymakers and development organizations better understand where agricultural interventions work, allowing them to target resources more effectively and build resilient food systems.
"New advances in satellite technology can help support decision-making in traditionally data-scarce systems," she said. "Many potential solutions already exist; we need to identify ways to increase the adoption of these strategies at scale."
Jain's study, published in Science, combines remote sensing and geospatial analyses with household-level and census datasets to examine farmer decision-making and behavior. Her work focuses on the impacts of weather variability and groundwater depletion on agricultural production in India and if farmers can adapt their cropping practices to mitigate these impacts.
Climate change is making farming more unpredictable while global demand for food continues to rise, she says. At the same time, agriculture remains a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions, water use and biodiversity loss.
Rather than viewing food production and environmental conservation as competing priorities, Jain says the two can often go hand in hand.
"There are many management strategies and interventions that can lead to both environmental and yield benefits," she said. "However, there are often other reasons these interventions are not adopted at scale, including affordability, access and awareness."
This moment is different because of the rapid evolution of satellite technology.
"Publicly available satellite data are now available that can map land cover at 10-meter resolution, which maps onto the size of smallholder fields well," Jain said. "There are also many new commercial satellites producing even finer spatial resolution data."
The improved resolution is especially important for smallholder farming systems, where fields are often too small to be captured effectively by older satellite imagery. Jain's research has long focused on smallholder agriculture, including farming systems in India, where she has used satellite data to study crop productivity, climate resilience and sustainable agricultural practices. It builds on that broader body of work by exploring how advances in satellite technology can help guide agricultural decision-making in data-scarce regions around the world.
Jain, to date, has not provided the satellite data products directly into farmers' hands, and instead, focuses on creating large-scale data products that help organizations and governments evaluate agricultural programs and determine where interventions are likely to have the greatest impact.
"We create large-scale data products that can then be used by organizations and policymakers to measure the impacts of their interventions or better identify where interventions can be most optimally targeted," she said.
That shift, from collecting information to improving decisions, represents what Jain sees as the next frontier for satellite-enabled agriculture.
Many sustainable farming practices already exist, she notes. The challenge is understanding where they are most effective and overcoming barriers that prevent widespread adoption.
"Many interventions can help both increase yields and reduce environmental impact," Jain said. "But they are often not adopted at scale because they are too expensive, are not accessible to farmers when they would be most beneficial, or they do not work in all contexts. Satellite data can help provide the more granular understanding needed to help target those interventions where they will be most successful."
The technology, however, is not without limitations.
"There is always error in any data product that is created, and it is important to be mindful of this error and how it may impact decision-making," Jain said.
For example, satellite-based yield estimates can struggle to accurately predict the highest- and lowest-yielding fields, a limitation researchers must consider when evaluating agricultural interventions.
Looking ahead, Jain sees satellite observations becoming a routine part of agricultural decision-making, helping governments and organizations understand which agricultural policies and interventions deliver the greatest benefits and where they should be deployed.
"I envision that we can use satellite data to better understand the impact of interventions and policies at scale and then use this information to more accurately target these interventions to the locations where they will be the most successful," she said.
As satellite technology continues to improve, she believes the greatest opportunity is to use these data to help ensure sustainable agricultural solutions reach the people and places where they can make the biggest difference.
