Normalized Differential Vegetation Index critical to Agricultural Monitoring in the United States

On April 29-30, 2012 the G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture brought together open data and agriculture experts along with the U.S. Agriculture Secretary U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and the World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development to explore more opportunities for open data and knowledge sharing. Governments want to help their farmers protect crops from pests and extreme weather, monitor water supplies and anticipate planting seasons that are shifting due to climate change.

New satellite technologies offer enhanced capabilities for early forecasting of food production at national, regional, and global scales. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) program aims to strengthen national capacity in all countries from freely available data.

These visuals show MODIS' satellite-derived crop NDVI Anomaly relative to average (2000-2011). Orange and brown indicate crop with below average conditions. Green indicates crop with above averate conditions. The visual compares the crop conditions or NDVI anomaly from year 2011-2012 to year 2012-2013. In the 2012-2013 year 7,342 more metric tons (MT) of wheat were produced then in the previous year, but 40,086 fewer metric tons of corn were produced.