Your level of food security is determined by whether you have reliable, affordable access to nutritious food. Researchers use several different factors to assess food security and come up with ways to solve poverty and hunger. This requires multiple types of data, such as agricultural data, health and nutrition surveys, cost of living statistics, and soil, compost, and pesticide measurements.

Data collected by NASA’s Earth-observing instruments help track agricultural activity and crop production across the globe. Satellites can image the extend of cropland and the damage to agriculture caused by natural disasters. In addition, NASA curates socioeconomic data to shine a light on the human cost of food insecurity in ways that cannot be observed from orbit.

Our data products useful to the study of food security include crop modeling studies, maps of food insecurity hotspots, data about the effects of climate change on agriculture, and data about different applications of fertilizers and pesticides. Some of these data products only survey a specific location, while others take a global scope. This blend of Earth science and socioeconomic data comprises a crucial resource for decision makers and other applied users.