Landsat Helping to Address Food Security Challenges in Africa

Access to food is a basic human need. Global food security challenges are impacting our ability to ensure all human beings can access adequate levels of food. Identified in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2), stakeholders and government bodies have been called on to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

33.8 million people are living with acute food insecurity in East Africa alone. A growing population – paired with decreasing food production – means it is predicted that Africa will only be fulfilling 13% of required food production by 2050. Africa’s vulnerability to food insecurity stems from a combination of factors such as population growth, climate change, limited access to resources, and political instability.

Despite these challenges, hope for the future comes from looking at the past. For more than five decades, Landsat satellites, developed by NASA and operated by the United States Geological Survey,  have captured a wide range of information about the world’s land and water resources. They provide us access to a rich archive of imagery that shows how we can better manage and capitalize our land, driving sustainable increases in productivity and profitability. In 2018, Geoscience Australia developed Digital Earth Australia (DEA) to harness more than 30 years of this Landsat archive. DEA enables us to view changes and trends over time, allowing scientists and land managers to make decisions with the confidence of hindsight. Digital Earth Africa, built on DEA technology, has been operating since 2019 to provide these benefits to the African continent.

Digital Earth Africa products and tools provide valuable insights into crop, soil and vegetation conditions across the continent. Knowing the location and condition of crops and vegetation is necessary to understand patterns of change over time and can help decision makers to predict what they can grow in the future and where. These insights can help governments, industry and local farmers to make data-informed decisions to implement sustainable agricultural practices, enhance resilience to climate change, and foster inclusive economic growth. 

According to the World Economic Forum, Digital Earth Africa has the potential to generate an impact of up to $900 million a year through the provision of EO data products for African agriculture. 

Digital Earth Africa Fractional Cover helps to identify ground cover across different landscapes by splitting landscape observation data into three parts, showing representative values for the proportion of bare, green and non-green cover on the Earth’s surface. Fractional Cover data holds immense potential for uncovering captivating patterns and ground cover trends over large areas, allowing the user to identify changes in seasonal vegetation, environmental conditions, and agricultural activities. 

Fractional Cover can inform how governments, industry and farmers assess risks related to wind and water erosion, understand soil carbon dynamics, provide insight into optimizing land management practices, and help evaluate rangeland condition. These valuable insights can be used by policy agencies, land resource managers in natural and agricultural sectors, and scientists, to monitor and evaluate land conditions in large areas over extended periods of time.

Digital Earth Africa Mean NDVI and Anomalies provide a monthly estimate of vegetation health and compares it to the long-term average conditions. The data gives users the ability to compare vegetation conditions from as far back as 1984, identify changes and patterns that may indicate improvement, maintenance, or deterioration across the continent. This can help to understand climate events such as drought, and adapt to or mitigate the effects.