As combines gear down, NASA wants to help the many farmers already thinking about when to plant next season.
NASA Harvest is a new association led by NASA and the University of Maryland. The goal of the project is to use satellite data for food and agriculture to determine how and why planting dates have changed over the years.
Here is a look at initial data for corn from the USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service. The warmer orange colors in the image above represent early planting. However, the purple colors — the hues that dominate this data, especially in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio — represent later corm planting.
The data is more widespread for soybeans (as pictured above), as many analysts say there is more wiggle room for getting those crops in the ground compared to corn, which requires a specific soil temperature and forecast just after it is planted.
