Miller Magazine Issue: 129 September 2020

47 NEWS MILLER / September 2020 ha and Aragón. Thanks to satellite data, the harvests can be monitored in near-real time, at parcel-level over the entire country. Scientists from the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium used data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions and the US Landsat-8 mis- sion together with machine learning to moni- tor crops on a weekly basis. Comparing the data with that of last year, they found that the 2020 harvesting season started in mid-June, which is later than the average crop calendar for winter cereals in Spain. Experts from the National Spanish Agrarian Guarantee Fund (FEGA) supported the moni- toring and worked with Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) to analyse the results – and while COVID-19 may have contributed to the delayed harvest, the weather may have also played a role. Sophie Bontemps, scientist at UCL, said, “After consulting our colleagues at FEGA, the time lag in harvesting can be explained partially by the drought that affected Europe in 2019, which led to an unusually early harvest last year. Therefore, the assess- ment of COVID-19 impacts on the 2020 harvest must consider the interannual variability caused by specific cli- mate conditions in 2019.” National Paying Agencies such as FEGA for Spain are responsible for the imple- mentation of the European Common Agricultural Policy, which requires crops to be monitored nationally. In collabora- tion with the European Commission, ESA has developed the Sen4CAP processing system, which was used here for the na- tional-scale harvest monitoring. In another example featured on the dashboard, data from JAXA’s ALOS-2 and GCOM-C satellites, combined with information from the Landsat and Co- pernicus Sentinel-2 missions, were used to assess rice fields near Sacramento, Ca- lifornia, US. These satellites can provide key information on rice phenology such as when rice is planted, when it matures and when it is harvested. Satellite observations show that in many regions, the rice was planted earlier than the last two years. These ear- ly assessments allow agriculture markets to respond more efficiently to disruptions owing to natural events such as the weather and to human-caused events such as chan- ges in trade policy and consumer demand triggered, for example, by the COVID-19 pandemic. ESA’s Benjamin Koetz, comments, “Sa- tellite indicators demonstrate the capabi- lities of monitoring the planting, growth and harvest of staple crops such as cere- als and rice at national scales. These data are vital in providing timely and transpa- rent information on agricultural produc- tion during the COVID-19 outbreak and recovery. “ESA, NASA and JAXA conti- nue to work with organisations such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organizati- on and the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative to ensure the best use of satellites to mo- nitor agricultural production from natio- nal to global scales.”