Earth ID: 3601

Global Agricultural Monitoring

Visualizations by Lori Perkins Released on June 27, 2009

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to strengthen collaboration. In support of this collaboration, NASA and the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) jointly funded a new project to assimilate NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data and products into an existing decision support system (DSS) operated by the International Production Assessment Division (IPAD) of FAS. To meet its objectives, FAS/IPAD uses satellite data and data products to monitor agriculture worldwide and to locate and keep track of natural disasters such as short and long term droughts, floods and persistent snow cover which impair agricultural productivity. FAS is the largest user of satellite imagery in the non-military sector of the U.S. government. For the last 20 years FAS has used a combination of Landsat and NOAA-AVHRR satellite data to monitor crop condition and report on episodic events.

This animation shows where the world's food is grown versus where the world's food is consumed. The movie starts with global croplands and then fades to the countries that produce over 80% of the world's wheat, grain, and cereal. It then overlays the world's population density and then fades to show the countries that are projected to double and triple their population by 2050.

Cropland areas as seen by MODIS are colored yellow in this image. This shows the areas around the world where food is grown.

Twenty six countries worldwide produce 82% of the world's wheat, grain, and cereals. These countries are shown in yellow.

This image shows the world's largest producers of wheat, grain, and cereal in yellow versus the world's 2002 population density in red.

This image shows the biggest producers of wheat, grain versus the countries that are projected to double or triple their population by 2050. The red cross hatched areas are where significantly more food will be needed. Africa is in trouble.

The United Nations is projecting the cross-hatched areas in light red to double their population.

Yellow represents the countries that currently produce over 80% of the world's wheat, grain, and cereals.

The United Nations is projecting the cross hatched areas to triple their population by 2050.

Yellow shows the countries that currently produce over 80% of the world's wheat, grain, and cereals.

Visualization Credits

Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Visualizer
Michelle Williams (UMBC): Producer
Chris Justice (University of Maryland): Scientist
Inbal Becker Reshef (University of Maryland): Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3601

Mission:
Terra

Data Used: