Satellite Data Fill the Void of Dwindling Crop Tours

The pandemic is helping to usher in a new era of food-production forecasts that rely more on satellite data and artificial intelligence and less on information gathered by people. The crop world, including major trading houses and statisticians at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has long depended on scouts trudging through fields to count corn kernels and soybean pods. But travel restrictions and new virus safety measures have cut participation in field tours at a time of increasing scrutiny over food security. "Covid-19 is disrupting agricultural supply chains in developing countries, and observers on the ground can no longer report on crop conditions," said Lillian Kay Petersen, a student at Harvard University. She won the top prize of this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search, a 79-year-old competition for high school students held by the Society for Science and the Public, for her model that uses daily satellite images to predict crop yields in Africa.