According to the NASA’s announcement, when global food prices increased dramatically in late 2007 and early 2008, the costs of basic ration doubled or even tripled in many places in the world, caused protests and riots.
To prevent the crisis occurs, global leaders have taken the initiative of a group of agricultural monitoring, bringing together representatives from countries and support groups .. The initiative, named GEOGLAM, satellites, collect images of the Earth and it is expected to provide better forecast about weather and future crop production.
Rice is one of the key crops to monitor. It is a major food for billions of people around the world.
However it is one of the most complicated crops to make predictions, mainly due to lack of information regarding the cultivation, production of this crop. For example, a flood or drought in Southeast Asia can lead to hundreds of thousands of starved people worldwide. It will be changed by setting the GEOGLAM initiative.
Some popular satellites used for GEOGLAM are the Landsat series, was launched in Earth orbit since 1972. The latest, Landsat 8, and the Terra and Aqua satellites are also used to serve the project.
In countries outside the US, this system will support the trials in Indonesia and Vietnam in the food-security programs.