Latest / Conservation Stories / Bringing Space Tech to the Farm: NASA's Role in Agriculture with Dr. Alyssa Whitcraft

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Bringing Space Tech to the Farm: NASA's Role in Agriculture with Dr. Alyssa Whitcraft · Conservation Stories

• 0:13
  Speaker A: Hello, friends, and welcome back to another edition of Conservation Stories. I'm your host, Hilary Timmins Sims. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research association, or SARA, as we like to call it. Hope you'll take a moment to go to our website and check us out@san Sarah-conservation.com We've got some great information there about all kinds of topics that you may be curious about, from produced water to soil health, all kinds of things. And today I am really excited because we have a very unique guest on and it is my new friend, Alyssa Wickcraft. And Alyssa is a NASA scientist, which I think is really cool. And Alyssa, I'm so excited that you are joining us. And I'm actually so excited that we have become friends and now partners in the project that you're developing for US Agriculture.
• 1:10
  Speaker B: Yes, I am too. Very kismet that we were able to connect at the Women in Agribusiness Conference, considering I'm not really a woman in agribusiness. So it was cool to have been invited to give a talk there and then be able to meet you.
• 1:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was really, it was really great. And I'm so glad that that happened. And I want to want to ask you if you'll give us a little bit of your background and why, why were you at the Women in Agribusiness? And NASA is a space, a space organization. What are they doing in agriculture? And can you tell me a little bit about that?
• 1:53
  Speaker B: So I am a research professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of Geographical Sciences, which a lot of people don't really in the US, I should say. Geography is kind of not really popular anymore. It kind of got shoved into social studies in high school and things like that. But it's actually the kind of the world's oldest discipline and it's very common major still in sort of the uk, Europe, other parts of the world. And basically geography is so wide ranging. There's economic geographers who look at, you know, obviously economics, but as it relates to place and social geographers and all kinds of stuff, I myself am somewhere between a physical geographer and a method geographer, which means I use different tools, the methods people, I develop methods and use different methods to analyze satellite data to understand what's going on with agriculture, which is like the physical side of stuff, right. The physical world. And so. Yep. So my PhD was also from the same department and I started out doing remote sensing, which is using satellite data to look at the Earth's Surface when I was an undergrad at UCLA and then decided to do my PhD and went from kind of being principally interested first in forests and agroforestry and moved over really to focus on croplands and that kind of part of agriculture. And my PhD topic was basically telling the space agencies when to turn on the satellites to look at agriculture around the world, pretty much. So I don't know if that made any sense, but that's my background. I guess a little other pertinent detail is I've always been interested in food and agriculture and the things that sustain people. Both as an Italian American, I just want to feed people. And secondly, as. As the daughter of a winemaker. My parents started a winery in the mid-80s and grew up sort of around a really rich grape and food cultivation kind of zone in Southern California and have always just been really. I don't love the sort of bucolic scenes that I grew up around and thought this is where I want to be.
• 4:35
  Speaker A: So where exactly was that in California?
• 4:37
  Speaker B: I'm from where? Well, I'm from.
• 4:40
  Speaker A: Give us a. Give us a pitch for your. Your parents winery. What's the name of.
• 4:47
  Speaker B: My brother operates it now, but it's an easy one to remember because it's my last name, Witcraft Winery. And it was one of the earliest wineries in that. In that area of California. And my dad had a wine radio. Sorry, go ahead.
• 5:02
  Speaker A: Your dad had wine radio?
• 5:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's just an interesting thing is my. My dad was, I think, gonna go to law school or something. He was a musician, kind of like a free spirit kind of guy. And my mom was getting her teaching credential at UC Santa Barbara, and they were already married at this point. And he took a job as a janitor at a wine shop because he just, like, needed to make some money. And I think within a month he had been promoted to be basically the manager of the wine shop. And so he was actually. This was in the mid-70s in Santa Barbara, and he was one of the first people, if not the first person, to serve wine by the glass in wine shops, which is interesting. And so he got very into wine really quickly. And he had a wine radio program that I think was like daily for 11 years. 11 years. And like. Yeah, like nine years or so into that is when he started. He and my mother started the winery.
• 5:59
  Speaker A: Which my brother now operates, and it's called Wyckraft Winery.
• 6:02
  Speaker B: Correct. And it's in Santa Barbara, California.
• 6:05
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, that is so. That's so amazing. That's really cool.
• 6:09
  Speaker B: Unfortunate.
• 6:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is. You know, you and I've discussed this a little bit. My. But my family's in the. The wine business.
• 6:16
  Speaker B: Oh, really?
• 6:16
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Maybe we haven't discussed this, but we. We grow grapes. And actually, it's been pretty bad the last year because, like, we. There wasn't really, I think maybe not a single vineyard in the high plains of Texas that contracts were not walked on this last year by wineries. Production. We have a lot of production, and we have. But we can grow wonderful Spanish varieties up here where we are. Oh. Oh, it's just fabulous. So we'll have to maybe have a talk about that afterwards. Off. Because that's off topic.
• 6:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And maybe like a. A little happy hour.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Oh, maybe. So there we go. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Y'all, maybe we need to mail you some. Some fruits of. Fruits of the labor of West Texas, so you can try it.
• 7:04
  Speaker B: I love the idea. I love that idea.
• 7:07
  Speaker A: So we are excited to be working with you on the latest project, which is a spin off of a project that you did originally with NASA, which was a global project. So let's start with. With your global project.
• 7:23
  Speaker B: I think the third question you had asked was, NASA's A space program. And so how did that come into the agriculture domain? And I'll tell that story really, really quickly, which is NASA launched the first Earth observing satellite in 1972, and some of its very earliest applications were actually in agriculture. And global monitoring of agriculture was what really drove it. So wanting to have transparency and really wanting the US Wanting to know what was going to happen globally with food supply. And so that was really what the early experiments were about, and that was sort of what the technology was limited to, the characteristics of the satellites. And, you know, we could only store so much data until really recently. Right. So you had to be kind of judicious about what data were collected because we just couldn't store it or analyze it. And so the last 10 years or so is when things really change in that domain and we suddenly have so much data that's really, really high quality. I mean, it's always been high quality, but we didn't have sort of the spatial resolution, we call it the level of detail, the number of megapixels. If you think about your phone camera, that would reveal what was happening, say, in a way that farmers might be able to use it to manage stuff. So that's pretty recent. NASA has always been in agriculture, and that is because it launches the satellites that turn around and look at Earth. It's one of them, right? I mean, there's agencies around the world who do it, which is. Which I can get to in just a second. But that's why then NASA also has science programs in the Earth Science Division that uses the satellite data, kind of improves it to the best possible quality so that there can be public and private sector innovation that uses it. One of the NASA satellites that's they operate with U.S. geological Survey called Landsat. And actually that very first Earth observing satellite in 1972 was a Landsat. And 2022 marks the launch of the ninth of this series. And it just keeps getting better. When the Landsat data sort of became freely and openly available and ubiquitous and all that, that's really what Google Earth and Google Maps grew out of. So, for example, I've gotten asked before, especially when I was starting my career, well, why do we need NASA to do this work if we already have Google Earth? And I'm like, Google Earth runs on that data. Like, you know, so we need to do a better job of making sure people understand the value that we can bring to the private sector in terms of their innovation. So that's what NASA is doing in agriculture. In 2011, there was a really bad drought and, you know, food prices shot up food prices and pushes people into food insecurity and hunger. And it also tends to be highly correlated with conflict and humanitarian issues. And so we have a great interest from a global perspective, from a national security perspective, to make sure there's enough food and to kind of mitigate those disasters so that we don't have conflict breakout. So the G20 came together in 2011 and said, look, these prices are too volatile in the market. We could all benefit from knowing more transparently and earlier what's going on. And they said, we think satellite data could be an important part of telling that story, just like it had been sort of from 1972, but we weren't doing it in a global, coordinated way. So, like, USDA might be doing their thing, or USAID might be doing their thing, and they may not be correlated or connected within even the US and like the European Union might be doing their thing, but we're not talking. And we might actually be disagreeing on what conditions are when we really could work together. So that's what the G20 said to do. That program is called Geoglam and Glam. Part of the acronym stands for Global Agriculture Monitoring. And I've been involved in that since the very beginning. And what I do is I work with the space agencies around the world. As I mentioned, there's many others beside NASA in different countries.
• 11:35
  Speaker A: For people that might not be aware, the G20 is actually like a forum of like a group of 20 countries that work together on international like economic cooperation and stuff.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: Yep. And so the G20, yeah, they cover different topics, not just agriculture, not just food, but they have a declaration that they put out at the end of the year which is where they sort of resolve to do different things to together or make statements about what important societal needs are. And that declaration is, you know, made up of many other like sub areas. And so our Mandate from the G20 comes from the ministries of agriculture, principally the agricultural chief scientists within the different ministries around the world. And so that's who we, you know, that's, that's both, you know, that's not like a foreign entity, so to speak. Because many of the parts of Geoglam, many of the different people contribute to that mission of using satellite data to promote food security and price, reduce price volatility in agricultural markets. That's the sort of bottom up organization that involves the ministries of agriculture. But then they come together at the kind of political level and agree to do these sort of different collaborations for the benefit of humankind.
• 12:58
  Speaker A: Something that's happening right now in US Agriculture is there was a bill passed to give some economic help to farmers. They were anticipating we could have lost about 30% of farmers through bankruptcy this year because yeah, it was really, it's been a horrifically bad year. And of course I think it also looks horrifically bad because 22, 23 were kind of, they were high, like they were good years, but it was an artificial kind of inflated good year. So five year average probably isn't as bad, but it sure seems, it's just really bad right now. So part of, you know, that has brought about some of the discussion of how much money farmers are getting and how much they rely on that and what, you know, what percentage of their actual, you know, net net profits. You know, the difference between 4% and like 12 to 16%. 4% is without, you know, government subsidies. And you know, so there's, but there's just been a going back and forth of what are we, is this the best way to do this? How can we, what can we do better? How can we change it? Because we're not just propping up US agriculture, we're propping up global agriculture.
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Right. And I mean in global food security. Right. So and the sort of downstream, the downstream impacts of that, I think that that's what kind of people tend to miss when they think about assistance to farmers is like how critical they are, like at multiple levels, like to their, you know, local communities, for example, you know, the economic and social fabric of kind of rural areas in the U.S. but then also, you know, the import of us having enough food produced domestically and what we do in terms of exporting food that can avoid food crises. And as I mentioned earlier, like, you know, food insecurity and food prices, they create conflict in wars. And so we have, you know, humanitarian interest. Right. Like just as humans. But also like, even if you remove that and are totally like, you know, I don't care about anybody else, I only care about my security. There's reasons why you would also want to do that 8 if you kind of understand how it all interacts.
• 15:21
  Speaker A: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So go, go forth now. Sorry I interrupted you. Your stream.
• 15:28
  Speaker B: No, you didn't interrupt me. It was more that I had a question. So. Because I have been pretty much offline the last month, which has been necessary, and I am not totally up to speed on what that conversation you referenced is when you're saying, wondering if it's the best way to do it. So what are the side conversations saying?
• 15:54
  Speaker A: I think that it goes back to what you're saying is why, why is it important to, to make sure that farmers are able to stay farming and that people don't necessarily understand and we haven't done a good job in agriculture, you know, telling that story. You know, and so people look at the farm bill and they then look at this, you know, what will probably ultimately be probably 30, I think 30. I can't remember. Sorry. If it's 21 or 31 billion dollars.
• 16:27
  Speaker B: I think it's 21 billion. The disaster aid package.
• 16:31
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 16:32
  Speaker B: And then there's like 10 billion in economic assistance on top of that.
• 16:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's probably where that, that's 31 came from. Yeah. So, you know, and it's, you know, there's just problems that, that it. No, no program is perfect and is it time to kind of look at some of that stuff and, you know, see, and I think everybody's just leery that AG is going to be on the chopping block. And especially if you look at tariffs, if there's potential for tariffs. I think it's, it's. I was talking to a farmer yesterday. They're like, I, I don't know that we'll, we'll survive it. There's, there is just a lot of fear and Uncertainty right now. There really is.
• 17:12
  Speaker B: So yeah, I don't blame people. I mean, I know that there was certainly a lot of anxiety that came up when in sort of mid late December when it was like, yeah, we don't know if we're going to get a farm bill extension or, you know, and we don't know if we're going to get that sort of disaster aid out to farmers. And so I understand, I mean, the tariffs were disastrous in sort of the 2016-2020 era. And I know farm incomes have been really down in 2024 versus 2023. And so something's got to give. And it's an interesting idea of sort of storytelling, I guess, being an important conduit to making that all work. And I'm sort of like flying the plane as I'm building it right now. It's like a real time thought that I'm having. But I feel like there's a really big difference in the way people understand military and defense in the US now because like both of my grandfathers were in World War II and almost everybody I know, their grandfathers also fought in World War II. And so, and then now I think it's like 1 or 2% of the US has some tied to the military now. And so there's this like, what's the point of defense or whatever the question is? Or like what are the realities that, you know, veterans are facing? Because it's for most people, they don't know veterans or they don't have them in their family. And I, and I think a corollary could maybe be made. And this is when I say I'm like, you know, know, flying the plane as I'm building it is a crawlery could be made to the fact that, you know, most people had agrarian ancestors relatively recently. And it's totally changed. I remember at UCLA, probably 2006 or 2000, yeah, probably 2006, in a class I was taking, I double majored in International Development Studies. So it was sort of like economics and political science and stuff. And in one of the classes we were talking about sort of agrarian societies and challenges they confront, for example. And this was a class, maybe 200 people, and they asked, you know, who here's family works in agriculture? And it was myself and one other person who raised their hand. And this is in California, right? Like this is California has quite a large amount of agriculture. So I was like, that's so I remember just kind of being shocked by that. And so I think the distance that we have that's just taken place the last two generations between just the way things have changed. If you don't have an understanding or a familiarity with what another community's value is or what the other things that they're struggling with, it's very easy to put them on the chopping block.
• 20:06
  Speaker A: So, yeah, and I think that's very true because, you know, and because the reverse is true within a lot of our communities. Like, we see, you know, we look at the farm bill and we see all the food programs and we want those cut, you know, because they are taking up the biggest lion's share of the farm bill for sure. You know, but you're, what you're saying to your point is like, well, we've never been in their place, and since we've never been in that place, then we, we are, you know, hey, you cut that and not cut us. You know, people have. And I, I, I think there's a comeback. I think people are coming back to wanting to understand farming and where their food comes from, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I would say through my, up until maybe 10 years ago, you know, there was a, pretty much a, just a disdain and a sense that we were always getting on the farming side, that we were destroying the environment. You know, it's interesting because a lot of the carbon smart farming practices that, you know, are, they were, you know, gonna be implemented and I think we've discussed this before, that people can't take part in them because they've already been doing them.
• 21:12
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah, they've been the early adopter, like, kind of punishment.
• 21:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
• 21:19
  Speaker B: Like, has been like a really real part of the conversation. And I think there's, I think there's been, yeah, it seems like if you're in those conversations now, that that is a pretty broadly understood concern that needs to be accounted for. But yeah, I mean, that was a story that sort of had to be told. And I've heard that some of those grants that have been received, they're like, okay, we're having actually a hard time, people, because there's just not enough people.
• 21:45
  Speaker A: They gave that money out. So the way they distributed it and the way it would go to farmers is, makes it, we're going to pay you $40 to implement $120 practice, you know, and farmers are like, why would I do this? Why would I do this? You know, like, I don't have any, there's no incentive for me to do this.
• 22:06
  Speaker B: No, it's just, it's like we saw this years Ago, I worked in an agroforestry project in Kenya. And it was like, the idea was, if you paid these farmers to plant these trees or to not cut down their trees, which, you know, these people, they're. They're deeply impoverished. They then, if you paid them, then that has the environmental benefit. And if you incentivize them, planting trees that will eventually themselves produce a sellable product rather than relying on the timber, for example. Right. If it's like gross coffee or something, I mean, I'm just making that up. But then the idea is like, you don't need that bridge funding anymore.
• 22:50
  Speaker A: Right?
• 22:50
  Speaker B: That is, in the interim, while they wait for something to literally bear fruit. But it's the. The devil has always, always been in the details of, like, how do you make sure it's enough money? And then. And how do you make sure that at the end there's going to be, like, a market for whatever it is that you've incentivized?
• 23:09
  Speaker A: Right.
• 23:09
  Speaker B: And that's what. So, like. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:11
  Speaker A: So, I mean, my issue has been, you know, and with the, with these programs that have come out, is that, okay, now we have these regeneratively grown like a soup on the shelf. Literally, it sprouts. It's $7 sitting next to $3, organic soup sitting next to a $1, you know, conventional soup. And, and what happens when, you know, the subsidies for this regeneratively grown product is gone because it won't last forever. And, and, you know, and what I was told way up from nrcs was, well, we. We were really hoping that these corporations will continue those incentives. And I'm like, right out here on the Texas plains, water is everything. And there's a resource that's as vital as it is fragile. Our Playa lakes. These lakes are nature's reservoir, catching rainwater to recharge our aquifer and provide lifelines for wildlife. But now they need our help. In collaboration with the Texas Fly Lakes Conservation Initiative and the Cargill Global Water Challenge, Sarah has started the Our Legacy is Tomorrow's Water initiative to inspire and work with landowners to restore and protect our Playa lakes. Each playa we save helps secure a sustainable water future for the generations that will be coming after us. Whether it's improving soil health, restoring habitats, or recharging groundwater, we are committed to making a difference. Together, we can build a legacy that we can all be proud of. To learn how you can join in, visit the Playa Lakes Restoration Initiative page on the SARA website. Let's keep Texas water flowing Strong for the future. Visit sara-conservation.com.
• 25:14
  Speaker B: There is something in the program that I, that I do feel like is a good. There is a good idea in there, which is like, you know, it's like the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come sort of thing. And you don't know until you try, in a sense. And hopefully in the process, like, you know, a. I mean, the incentives have to work in the short term, there's no doubt about that. But there needs, you know, hopefully in the process of building, say, trying to build a new consumer interest or trying to, you know, build and build a market for something and see if it could be sustained past the initial term. In the process of doing that, like, you know, your business is better prepared to pivot if. If you can't continue that. But like, you know, kind of the. It's just that you're kind of passing around risk. And if the risk accumulates in people who are already, like you said, operating on like, sort of thin margins, who are one bad harvest away from packing it in and selling the farmland off to, you know, a VC or whatever, then you could understand why there would be some resistance to these kind of activities. I mean, and so this actually might be like a good conduit to talking about some of the work that we've been doing, I mean, related to the climate Smart commodities. The program that, under which we met and that we're starting to work together on is called NASA Acres, and it is NASA's US focused agriculture program. And I mentioned before that NASA, like, collects the data and they have these science programs to advance the quality of the data in this, that and the other. And that's all been very important. What this program is designed to do, and it started in 2023, is take the benefit of basically 50 years of kind of innovation that is now being coupled alongside way better data from the space than we had before, and then trying to turn that into, like, direct impact and benefit for farmers. So we know already there's pretty much every farmer uses satellite data already. But what we learned in a survey is that like, less than one in three farmers, at least the ones that we survey through Farm Journal are aware that they do. And so, like, the. Where it shows up is, you know, in weather, it's in gps, you know, it's in all of those kind of different components. But it's also, you know, some of the more mechanized, like, you know, larger farms where they have higher quality, more complex machinery, they're getting services offered by the different Companies that they're purchasing machinery from or purchasing services from as well, that rely on satellite data. But my opinion is that what we have in NASA, what we have at my home university, University of Maryland, which uniquely one of, I think one of the only one of two programs and actually they're both at University of Maryland that NASA has put outside of a NASA center. So what we do that's kind of unique is quality. I mean like that's it. We can do the slow roll on the highest quality imagery and like we are designed to do the best possible work and we're not designed to in perpetuity be a business, so to speak, that provides services to farmers. And so then it becomes really important for us to work with farmers directly, work with the people who work with farmers and who could like, say, be it extension or a private company to say, hey, you could look at, know this cool innovation that we accomplished around early season yield forecasting. If you collect this information on farm, then it's, you know, what we've done is taken the kind of technical innovation and around satellite data and remote sensing and then allowed the private sector to innovate on that and for the benefit of agriculture. So we are in a sense aiming to sort of de risk some of the innovation. And like, as taxpayers, we've already paid for the launch of these satellites and they provide all kinds of benefits like I outlined. But so like this is an incremental investment on top of that to really get the value into the hands of farmers and ranchers and other people who support the agri food system in the U.S. and so yeah, so I say it's down to earth information for US Agriculture, really bridging the gap that exists between where the satellites fly, which is like 400 and change miles above the Earth, and the soil that farmers are managing.
• 30:09
  Speaker A: We were hoping to get an RCPP that we didn't get and we were looking at, you know, collecting a lot of data and then making that all, you know, aggregate that data where nobody, you know, I can't figure out what's on my, you know, what came from my neighbor. I can't do that. But for my own data I can, you know, everything's aggregated so I can see everything. But if I want to see my data, I can see my data. And if I want my agronomist to see my data, then my agronomist can see my data. But no one can see my data unless I have signed off and given permission for that particular person, you know, and making that Available free for farmers. Because nothing is free to farmers.
• 30:52
  Speaker B: Right.
• 30:53
  Speaker A: You know? Right. It is like every. On. On every single thing you do. It's like, who was, I think Kennedy that said the farmers? The one that, you know, buys everything at retail and sells at wholesale, you know, and so everything that we do, input cost. If we make money, they go up. If we lose money, they stay up.
• 31:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:16
  Speaker A: The prices don't ever come down. They don't come down. You know, and I wonder, like, at what point, you know, I don't know if you saw that McDonald's has brought back their $1 menu because their food prices have gone up 40%. And recently I was in Santa Fe and there was a sign on a little locally owned restaurant that said our prices have come down. The. Our input prices, like our. Our food costs are coming down. So we have lowered the prices on our menu to reflect that change.
• 31:41
  Speaker B: Who.
• 31:42
  Speaker A: Who does that? People don't do that, you know, and so I am like, you can bet that, like, that's the first place I want to eat, you know, but that's something we never see in agriculture. You know, it's just like the pressure of higher and higher. And we were just talking in another podcast about, you know, a certain implement company who is, you know, phasing out all of their current technology so that there's not going to be any way for you to fix that technology. So what are you gonna have to do? You're gonna have to buy new equipment.
• 32:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. Planned obsolescence. They call it planned obsolescence. That's what Apple does. And it's like, oh, you know, this. We don't sell this part anymore. Or this isn't compatible with this new system, and you're pushed into buying a new piece of technology, which, by the way, is like, I mean, I get it. You know, I'm a capitalist, too. And at the same time, I also care a great deal about, I don't know, the earth and people. I mean, it's like those people in the restaurant, like, you can see why prices don't come down. You can see, you know, you want to have economic success and growth, and then that there comes in, like, the kind of personal morality that that owner likely has, morality that I have as well, which is like, I want to make sure that I don't have members in my community, members of. Not even my communities. Like people, humankind who are hungry when we are. When there's so much. Like, there's just so much. We just. We shouldn't have people dying of Hunger, Right, right.
• 33:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Well, so we kind of know you want. In theory, we know we. There's. There's these things that you can do and you can collect this data. Now what. I mean, like, what. When I think of, like, you know, okay, so we can know what the weather is going to be and what else, you know, like, to me, I'm like, what else are we gonna do with this? And everybody keeps saying, oh, there's so much. There's so much, so much. And then. But I don't. I'm not sure what people are talking about and what exactly the benefits are for farmers to, you know, take part in that or, you know, what. What does that look like? What are you talking about? Beyond weather?
• 33:57
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So it seems like there's two sides to this question. And one is like, well, what else can satellites see? Like, what are even the sort of capabilities? And then the other half of the question is like, all right, so, okay, great. That's what they can see. How are you going to, you know, bring the value of that to farmers? So on the first question, we can see a lot. We can see everything from all the things that nature is doing, right? Like temperature, precipitation. We talked about weather, wind speed, all these different kind of environmental and agrometeorological variables. But then we can also see what, you know, what humans are doing and understand different management practices or, for example, the crop rotation that's in use or, you know, the rewilding of certain parts of their land for pollinator or pheasant or whatever habitat. We can also see planting and not so planting, but emergence and harvest states. And we can see how vegetation is growing throughout the season. So that's like the kind of condition monitoring and can help us get early warning of problems. We can also do yield forecasting as a result of having many years of data. And then there's. So that's sort of what nature is doing, what humans are doing. And then there's the sort of like, okay, well, what happened? And so an example of that would be like, yield. So and so used. This is what happened with weather. Here are the 20 different, you know, management treatments they use, all of which not all of which, by the way, are remote sensible. This is a preview of why it's so important to work with farmers. And then, you know, to be like, well, what mattered? What was the thing that made the difference on this person's farm versus their neighbors? Like, what was. What is the thing that they should put their time and effort and resources into to increase productivity or decrease risk or, you know, promote stability from year to year. What unpacking, sort of like what the actual drivers are, because, you know, that's one of the strengths that our type of science has, is like so many data points that we can start to kind of like unpack them and parse through really what's happening. And then there's, you know, you can look at, like, you know, nitrogen content in corn and look at it in a very subfield kind of way that can help somebody decide where they want to do side dressing within season and where they're like, it's not worth, you know, wasting inputs because inputs are expensive, or it's not waste worth machinery wear and tear or. Or whatever it might be. And so what I've just kind of outlined is there's like, the kind of mapping and information gathering, the kind of methodological advancement for us to measure and understand agriculture, what's happening. But then there's the sort of combination of these different layers, these different variables and data sets to answer important questions and build knowledge. And these are questions that we are asked by farmers. They're not, by the way, just like coming organically from our brains. And then there's the third piece, which is like, all right, let's say we've seen canopy nitrogen and develop that sensing technology. Now, how do we assimilate that? How do we put that in the hands of the person who needs to make that decision and into the machinery that they might use to execute said decision? And so that's where it's like, you know, traditional science ends. At the paper, I created an algorithm to map this variable and I did a good job, or I studied how tillage and yield have interacted. And now I have a better sense of, like, you know, where it makes sense to adopt this practice for a certain outcome and where it doesn't make sense to adopt those practice things like that, which is really important and that is a part of our program. But really the core difference is that we are trying to build solid relationships with farmers so that their questions drive the work that we do, tracing all the way back to those, like, early measurements, that the way that we measure things and create the maps are the right variables being measured. Like we're doing it right. And then we work with the farmers to, you know, to answer the questions that matter to them and maybe start developing even a tool, if that's what they're practicing. Priority is that they are, like, high touch collaborators on. And what you had said about, like, how, you know, everything is Sold to the farmer. That's part of what I feel like we are in such a like exciting and unique position around because like we are here for farmers, like we are tax payer funded. And so like that is our, that's our mandate. And yeah, exactly like you've already paid for it. So our mandate is really to try and close that gap as much as we can. And so we are launching through NASA Acres this new program that you are supporting us with, which is called fiat. Fiat means let it be done in Latin and it stands for the Farm Innovation Ambassador team. And so basically I've talked about what we can see from space, what we can measure from space. But what I didn't say, which is incredibly important, is that we need examples, ground truth as some people sometimes call it. We need yield measurements, we need soil moisture measurements, we need all kinds of stuff to calibrate. We will to say to the satellite, hey, this is what this thing looks like. Can you go find this thing in another place or can you predict this thing? Basically what I'm trying to say is all of our work depends on field data already, on ground data already. So if we're going to do the best possible job of measuring, we have to work with the people who are collecting the data. And, and my strong commitment and what has shaped the underpinnings of our program is that that is not our data. Like we are working together with their private data, right? And our public satellite data and public methods, which by the way introduces interesting stuff that we've been tackling around, like how contracts are written. But we're pulling that together and acknowledging that what comes out when you mix public and private isn't automatically public. It's like what happens with the methods or the tools, stuff like that at the end of it. And so that stuff we're really confronting up front because we've heard from farmers like, well, what are you going to do? You're going to turn around and send this to usda? Are you going to create a product and sell it back to me? Are you going to tell my neighbor what I've been doing? And I'm like, no, that's not our plan. And we should make that. We should make that very clear in the contract we write. Now there are farmers who we work with who are interested in improving NRCS programming or state government programming. And in that case the rules for that collaboration would be, yes, this is where it goes in the end. But the most important part is that you state that up front, right?
• 41:23
  Speaker A: So you're talking about working, you're talking about like, what is this individual farmer's concerns and goals and making certain that the contract that you write with them reflects that.
• 41:34
  Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, exactly. And so we've worked with this American Farm Bureau Federation and American Soy association and many other associations that. I don't want to be mad because I didn't give you a laundry list. They have this Ag Data Transparent initiative that basically launched about 10 years ago and provides kind of guidance for how different data use agreements with ag data should be written. So it's like they need to be simple. You need to specify where the data will be stored, who has access to the data, all this kind of stuff. And we took those general principles and we adapted them for our unique situation. That adt Ag Data Transparent, they built it for like business to business. Like John Deere was the farmer. We are this kind of unique entity. We are public. And so. And we use satellite data that's publicly available. The data itself, right, Just the pictures of Earth are publicly available. But that's very different from information. And so it's like, how do we make sure that when we adapt these principles for our situation, we are actually able to implement the ethics I've just told you about? Right? Because ultimately I can say what I want and what I truly believe in. But like University of Maryland signs my data use agreements and do you see what I'm saying? We need to have an actual written contract because there are other actors in the room that are not just you know, me and my neighbors or whatever. So what fiat does is it's kind of like a three part Venn diagram of actors who combine together to create innovation. And so the three parts of this Venn diagram are the farmers or you know, their designated crop consultants who they want to take, you know, to manage this relationship for them. Then you've got the researchers who are going to not just be remote sensing folks, but there's agronomists, soil scientists, all kinds of stuff could be involved depending on what the question is. And then you have critically, the place, the place is the farm or the set of farms enrolled in a fiat project. Because then what we're doing is, that's really our motto again, which is bringing the value of space data down to Earth. Like really, we gotta link it to Earth, the place. That's where people are managing a place. They're not, you know, walking into a global room and then making decisions off of that data on their farm. We have to make it relevant to them. So These are the sort of early adopters who are okay with, I say like they're okay with seeing a little bit of the sausage being made, right? Because this is new for NASA, this is new for universities really to work this way. And so, you know, these are these early adopters who are like here to kind of help us figure out how to make this successful. And then these are kind of like tech believers, if you will, people who see the value or people who like we've built trustworthy relationships with already over the years. They're on board. And then there's the idea that, you know, people in their communities trust people in their communities more than they trust outsiders. A universal human trait. And so that's where the ambassador part of fiat comes in, which is if we, you know, refine the process with these earliest adopters who they can become ambassadors into their community so they can like enroll other people in say a tool development that we're doing, or they can say like, hey, this thing is this, like, would you like to come to my farm and see a demonstration? That kind of stuff. So that they're reaching out into their communities for people who maybe, you know, they are a little bit less interested and there's many reasons for this, or they don't have enough time or whatever it might be to be the first people at the gate, you know. And so that's really what we're trying to do now with this new fiat program is kind of formalize these place based human to human relationships that can accelerate the turning of the cool science we can do into something that actually is far and relevant.
• 45:47
  Speaker A: Sarah, our organization is working with you to help recruit for a steering committee. We've got those folks lined out and they're going to meet after the Commodity Classic to discuss parameters of research and what they feel like needs to be done and get their input. Because really what you're looking at is we want to start with what the farmer needs.
• 46:09
  Speaker B: Yes. And this really is like baked in from day one. So like I was kind of talking about how the Farm Innovation ambassador team like itself is this. It has these projects that tie together researchers, you know, farmers or their designees and their farms, their sites. But there's like, you know, that's, that's where we're going, where we're starting is like, all right, that's the idea. And people have, you know, farmers we've talked to have gotten behind that. But it's like, all right, there's a lot of distance between here and there. So we really, if we're going to make this program a success. We got to build even the program framework, we got to co create it. Co design, those are kind of words that are used right now. We got to get together from the very beginning. And so yeah, the steering committee, it's like kind of an ad hoc steering committee because like, one of the questions for them is like, okay, what should the steering committee look like? You know, so like this is the precursor, the pre party, if you will. These are people who are going to help us develop the program framework, come up with a value proposition that's really clear. Success metrics, governance, all this kind of stuff. These are these like influential folks who. We know you, we know a lot of them already, although, you know, you've introduced us to some interesting people who are new in our world so that we can broaden kind of the representation that we have on the steering committee. And we'll be convening them together in March right after the Commodity Classic in Denver to. Yeah, to kind of resolve the things I just talked about so we can start unrolling this program. Not unrolling, rolling out this program and making sure that the kind of big vision, we have solid implementation footing underneath it.
• 48:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think the reason I'm so excited about that is because I think if I look at even say, let's look at the Climate Smart grants, the one that I have seen, like the one that they have everyone signed up and everything's gone like, boom, they're done. And that was the rice, the rice growers, Ducks Unlimited. Because what they, the first thing they did, they got the grant. They convened farmers exactly what you're doing and said, y'all decide how we need to do this. And they, I mean, they had waiting list, they set, you know, they said, here's the limits on what farmers can receive. And I mean, all of that was done. And because those are the people that know what they need and they know what won't work and they know what will work. And so I mean, I, that is the, to me, the prime example of a program that starts with the people that you're going to serve instead of leaving people completely out of that conversation, you know, and, and so, but you know, the other thing, that's different too. And like we were talking about this while ago, like both of us are like, hey, we're all about capitalism, but a lot of times farmers, they just get sick of being the ones that are going to be taken advantage of. And like, I know I'm going to do this for you and what's in it for me? Something I'm going to have to pay for, you know, and so to be able to say we're setting the parameters for something for you that's going to be available to you because you've already.
• 49:24
  Speaker B: Paid for it, right, with your time and energy. And actually, so that's like one of the things when we're sort of writing those contracts. What we found out in that survey I mentioned before that we did with Farm Journal Trust and Food, when we asked sort of like what kind of interests them or incentivizes them in research, a lot of people, they're like, you know, they're down with commercialization. You know, they're like, I would like that. I'd like to have an equity stake or royalty stake and what's, what's developed. Like, you know, I want to know that that's going to be what happens. And that's one viable path forward. Another path forward that was interesting to them was that whatever is developed is provided in perpetuity to me for free. You know, another is like, I just want it to be. I want it to be provided to the entirety of the farm community for free. Like, that's really what I want to see happen. And so there's, so there's kind of like different perspectives on it. And like, I, you know, I'm not like, you know, when we created our governance principles and this was the same for adt, we're not saying, like, in most cases, in most cases, we aren't making like a value statement or like a command. We'll never commercialize, we'll never do this. It's really more like, you gotta agree on that and put it up front in the contract. Like, this is not something you can put out and put off and figure out when you get there. It's kind of like we gotta like get on the same page. And this is one way for us to be on the same page. And this is like, this is required so much. I'm my own ambassador to my own community. Like, it's required so much work. Because that is like the opposite in a way of how we have been trained in science. It's like replicable science. Publish your data sets, your results, your models, make everything freely and openly available. Like, that's a requirement of a lot of journals that you publish in. It's like how we get assessed in universities is like, often how much we publish and also how much money we bring in. But how much we publish is a really big metric. And then from NASA's perspective and from general kind of White House trends, and this transcends conservative or liberal, like, it's very, you know, this is just. The general trend is like, open up science, open up data. If the US is, you know, we as taxpayers are paying for it, we should have access to everything. And there's an. Like, I generally agree with that on the. I agree with that on the imagery side. We should have access to the imagery that NASA collects. But the piece that's, like, missing is this nuance of. Well, what about when you combine that with ground data and. Or you turn it into information, you turn it into yield. Like a picture of ground is. The ground is very far away from yield. And so it's like, that's where the devil is in those details, and we can't ignore them if we want to be successful.
• 52:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, this has been super interesting, and I'm, I'm so excited that we're able to be in, you know, an actual beneficial part of getting this off and rolling and looking forward to talking to my neighbors and other folks I know that aren't living as close to me, but I know they're in agriculture about participating, because I think it's a very, very much worthwhile.
• 52:43
  Speaker B: Oh, well, thank you. And I'm, I'm really excited. And anytime there's ideas about, you know, how we can benefit different communities, we. We also kind of like, welcome that input, you know, even if they're not somebody we already know. Broadening the kind of opening the mic, if you will. Like. We welcome. We welcome that not everybody's going to agree and not everything is implementable, but we certainly want to hear it and have it in our. In our consideration.
• 53:13
  Speaker A: Well, thank you, Alyssa, for being here and thanks, listeners again for tuning in to this episode of Conservation Stories. And if you have found information interesting and helpful, I hope that you would rate us and share this podcast with your friends. That's like giving us a financial contribution, really. So we appreciate your support, and we look forward forward to visiting with another friend. Next time on Conservation Stories.