This document summarizes discussions from Team 1 during the Nairobi INSPIRE Hackathon focused on how Earth observation technologies can help farmers and communities ensure food security. Over 100 people participated in the discussion. Questions were asked about how Earth observation can help African agriculture, potential experiments to test, farmer groups in Kenya, practical experience with Earth observation, and how small farmers can benefit. Ideas focused on soil management, crop monitoring, risk assessment, and using data for insurance indexes. The team will continue collecting ideas and developing examples and analysis using Earth observation data to make recommendations for COPERNICUS development and build collaborative projects.

1. Nairobi INSPIRE Hack
Nairobi, 10th May 2019)
Food Security in Relation to Earth Observation
(GEOSS and COPERNICUS Relevance)
Karel Charvat in cooperation with all Team 1
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
grant agreement No [number]
www.EO4AGRI.eu
Bringing together the knowledge
for better Agriculture Monitoring

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Contributors
122 people express their interest
25 People sent their CVs
16 people contribute to next discussion

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Objective
The goal of this team was to analyze ways how
Earth Observation technologies can help farmers
and all communities at local and regional levels
for more sustainable agriculture and food
security.

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6 questions
1. Why I would like work in this group?
2. Where Earth Observation can help to African
Agriculture?
3. Ideas about potential experiments?
4. Who are main target groups of farmers in
your country?
5. Do you have practical experience with
implementation of EO in your country?
6. Can benefit small farmers from EO?

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Question N. 1
1. Food security is a major challenge in Kenya
and Africa at large considering the country’s
economy is largely agrarian.
2. Food and nutrition security is my major areas
of expertise therefore, I am always willing to
participate in anything that can help to
improve my knowledge in the area.
3. Food (and water) insecurity are a consistent
drivers of vulnerability in Africa.

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Question N. 2
1. Soil management can benefit a lot from earth
observation.
2. Near real-time crop monitoring data would be
very helpful to farmers to enable them
identify remedies to crop failures in good
time and avoid losses.
3. The same data could assist government plan
in advance in terms of addressing the
anticipated deficit in food stock hence avert
cases of food shortage.

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Question N. 2
1. Earth Observation will also be very important
in prediction analysis in the agricultural
sector.
2. Earth observation can be used to assess
risks/threats to sensitive ecosystems like
forests and wetlands.
3. EO in particular weather data and biomass
can be used to generate index based services
for Banking and insurance such as Weather
and Yield index

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Question N. 3
1. Sampling plots from different agro-climatic
zones
2. Establishing crop growth scenarios under
different weather events
3. Prediction of disease susceptibility of crop
using the temporal crop dynamics from earth
observation data.
4. A combination of agent-based models of
human activities and how these contribute to
food (in)security and a dynamic changes

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Question N. 3
1. Accurate monitoring crop phenology to aid
the application of farm inputs like fertilizers,
irrigation and farm management.
2. Assessment of hydrological flows through a
combination of field observations and output
from satellite image analysis workflows.
3. Augmenting weather and climate monitoring
through the use of affordable in-situ weather
sensors and remote sensed weather
estimates.

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Question N. 4
1. In Kenya, some of the significant farmer
groups include maize farmers, rice farmers
and sugarcane farmers

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Question N. 5
1. I (Parmita Ghosh) do have for my country
India and Germany
2. I have experience with Copernicus Data for
climate monitoring (Kizito)
3. I have a background in applied geoinformatics
and am currently using earth observation
data to address water and food insecurity
questions in the dryland regions of Kenya
(Francis Oloo)

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Question N. 6
1. Sentinel 1, 2 has spatial resolution of 20 m so
small farmers can be benefited by the
products developed using images from these
satellites.
2. Landsat can particularly be used for
awareness creation on issues like land
degradation and land use change and its
influence on land health and the potential
areas that can be used for farming.

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More detail information
See this here
https://www.plan4all.eu/2019/04/team-1-
progress-report-i/

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Starting experiment

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Conclusion
1. We will continue in collection of ideas.
Questions will be available also on
SmartAfriHub (see team 5)
2. We will use this for recommendation for
future development of COPERNICUS
3. We will try to build common projects on the
base of ideas
4. We will prepare examples of indexes and
analysis of image, it will be available on
https://www.smartafrihub.com/.

16. THANK YOU FOR ATTENTION
Team 1
charvat@wirelessinfo.cz
https://www.plan4all.eu/nairobi-inspire-
hackathon-2019/
https://www.smartafrihub.com/.