Kernel, together with NASA Harvest, participates in a project that researches the impact of hostilities on Ukrainian agriculture and assesses agricultural production in the occupied territories – with the support of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. As part of the cooperation, the Ukrainian company shared its agronomic experience and data on the distribution of sown areas by crops with the specialists of NASA Harvest. 

Announcing the collaboration, Inbal Becker-Reshef, NASA Harvest Program Director, said: “This partnership underscores our collective dedication to addressing the complex challenges facing global food security and agricultural production in one of the world’s major breadbaskets. We are thrilled to continue our partnership in the 2024 year”.

Alex Olin, Strategic Partnership Manager for Ukraine at NASA Harvest, noted the contribution of the Data Science Kernel department to the work on the initiative.

“We were pleased to join the NASA Harvest’s initiatives focused on Ukraine in 2023, contributing data and insights that we recognize as crucial in supporting our nation during challenging wartime conditions,” says Andriy Pishyy, Chief Information Officer, Kernel.

A pilot project focuses on developing remote sensing-based machine-learning approaches to crop type mapping. NASA Harvest maps were validated based on Kernel data and obtained around 90% accuracies in 2022 and 2023 for winter cereals, rapeseed, and sunflower.

“The goal of the cooperation was to consolidate our relationship and work on our first common project. We built a baseline model based on open data and Kernel data in 3-4 months, which would predict crop types. We managed to successfully validate an approach using neural networks, which showed excellent results on our data”, said Danylo Polyakov, Head of Data Science at Kernel.

We are confident that deepening cooperation with NASA Harvest in 2024 will help achieve significant success in the development of satellite monitoring of agriculture. And this, in turn, will contribute to the adoption of effective decisions in support of the agricultural sector of Ukraine, which plays a key role in global food security.