NASA, UI team up for farm research
Apr. 24—URBANA — The NASA Acres consortium which connects technology from outer space to farming here on Earth includes dozens of partners, but its chief scientist is the University of Illinois' own Kaiyu Guan.
NASA officials visited the UI on Tuesday to discuss further partnership, especially when it comes to tackling food insecurity and agricultural challenges.
Representatives from groups that work directly with farmers — like the Illinois Farm Bureau, Soybean Association and Corn Growers Association — also had a chance to join the conversation, which Guan was excited about.
"If we already have NASA data, if we have the tools, how can we actually bring that to the hands of farmers to make a real impact on the ground?" he said.
"The last mile in science and any work really is getting it out into use," said NASA Acres Executive Director Alyssa Whitcraft. "This type of meeting where we sit around a roundtable, we have these conversations, that's the beginning of actually setting up the bridge that can cross that last mile."
The UI has been part of NASA Acres since its start in March 2023.
NASA is able to provide helpful data to agriculture researchers by way of highly detailed satellite "Earth observation" which can monitor things like water tables, disease and more.
For example, one current project aims to make irrigation more efficient in states like California by monitoring soil and crop water status and providing accurate weather forecasts.
"When you think about NASA, you think about launching rockets or launching satellites, but one of the biggest NASA programs is earth science," Guan said.
Whitcraft said that NASA has been involved in agriculture since the '70s.
"There was a mismatch, you could say, between some of the satellite data and some of the questions that were being asked on farms," Whitcraft said.
Within the last decade, NASA has put more focus on connecting with both agriculture researchers and farmers to find data that directly helps them, eventually leading to the NASA Acres consortium.
"One of the things we'd really like to accomplish is getting more tools that use satellite data in the hands of farmers, ranchers and other agri-food systems — those people who are involved in food security and food production in the U.S.," Whitcraft said. "We also need satellite data to better understand what's happening, what's changing, why it's changing, whether we're seeing different things happen, whether it's a natural influence or it's human influence and things like that to help farmers make the best decisions that create a solid bottom line for their farms."
