Crop yield estimation

Accurate and timely production forecasts are critical for making informed agricultural policies and investments, as well as increasing market efficiency and stability. We developed a method (Becker-Reshef et al., 2010; Franch et al., 2015), based on remote sensing data, which is is capable of producing wheat yield estimations over the major wheat producing countries up to two months before its harvest. It combines the information of MODIS satellite images of the crop biomass, with the accumulated heat of the crop from NCEP data. The goal of this project is to monitor the wheat yield over the most important wheat producing countries. We will also work to adapt the model to other crops such as soybeans, corn or rice. Furthermore, we are currently working on the application of this model at finer resolution using Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 harmonized dataset.