Agricultural prices, and to some extent food prices, depend on global supply and demand. You think about oil markets or gold markets. Well, there's a huge corn and soybean market and a wheat market as well too.
Our farmers have global markets, and understanding the food supply in other countries is critical to setting those prices so our farmers know what to plant, how much money they're going to make if they plant.
Each month we produced the WASDE report - World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates. This has been a report which allows everybody in the marketplace to be on an equal footing once a month throughout the year. We combine NASA satellite data with ground observations, meteorology data, other sources of data to create the WASDE report.
The data NASA provides to USDA helps make the World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates the most accurate view of global food production possible.
There are many countries for which we rely a lot on NASA data, Earth observation data in order to assess crops and locations we can't easily get to.
With NASA's view from space, we can see crop production across every major agriculture region on Earth. This data also benefits farmers in many significant ways if they need to grow another crop that may be better suited for their area, or it might be more profitable for them to grow a different crop.
We're a big exporter of agricultural products here in the United States. Agricultural producers pride themselves as being suppliers to the world, and so they need to know what the world wants from them. And this is the way they can assess what that global demand is.
We can spot potential problems before harvest, whether it's a drought in the Midwest or flooding in Asia. This data is used by USDA to create a snapshot of crop production worldwide.
This early warning system is critical for keeping the markets calm. It allows the market to respond as quickly as possible to these supply shocks, which sometimes threaten food security in some countries.
I'm going to bet that most people aren't concerned with the cost of wheat futures, or what the Corn Volatility Index is while they're grocery shopping, but they are concerned about the sticker shock at the cost of bread or cereal at the checkout. By keeping watch on the world's food supply, NASA's doing its part to keep food on the table.