Monday, February 2, 2015

Canada to use U.S. spy in the sky for agriculture

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says it’s going to use a United States satellite to scan soils for moisture levels.

It says “scientists will use these soil moisture measurements to help improve our understanding of processes that affect weather and climate, and in turn, agricultural production.”

There seems to be an assumption that this data will only be collected over Canadian farms, but the Canadian Wheat Board, when it held a monopoly on exports, used satellites to keep track of crops in customer and competing nations.

That was deemed far more valuable than data on Canadian crops because the Canadian Wheat Board was in a good position to judge how Canadian crops were faring.

Agriculture Canada says in its news release that the U.S. launched launched the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite from California on Jan. 31.

“This mission will produce the most accurate, highest-resolution global maps of soil moisture, temperature and freeze-thaw cycles ever obtained from space.


“The information will be particularly useful for the agriculture sector by helping to improve weather prediction and crop productivity models, monitoring areas affected by drought or excess moisture and improving flood forecasts,” the federal agriculture department news release says.