NASA is helping Hawai’i farmers grow more food with AI

For many Hawaiian farmers, agriculture is more than a profession; it is their kuleana, or responsibility. It is a practice with deep cultural roots tied to the ancient concept of aloha ʻāinalove and responsible stewardship of the land.

Despite this cultural connection to farming, agricultural production and food systems across Hawai’i have suffered from decades of commercial exploitation, climate change, economic volatility and policy failures. Historically, Hawai’i allocates less than 1% of the state budget to agriculture.

At first glance, NASA may seem like an unlikely partner in bolstering traditional farming practices. Their medium is data, not dirt; their tools are computers, not the body; they are driven by innovation rather than tradition.

But in Maui County, which reports the state’s highest prevalence of food insecurity, these extremes are meeting in the middle to repair parts of the food system in a sustainable and culturally appropriate way.

Achieving aloha ʻāina through AI

Hawai’i imports roughly 85%-90% of its food as much of its productive agricultural land is used to grow the island’s main exports of sugarcane and pineapple. Plantations began shutting down in the 1980s, and, with the last closure in 2016, much of that land remains fallow as a stark reminder of the impacts of industrial monoculture.

A dependence on mainland agricultural imports has led to supply chain vulnerabilities, high food prices and increased food insecurity, especially among low-income residents, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, who disproportionately face higher rates of food insecurity.

Hawai’i has made agricultural self-sufficiency a priority, and has embarked on a concentrated effort to increase local food production. To help, researchers from NASA Harvest, an agency consortium focused on food security and environmental resiliency, have used satellite imagery to help drive decisions about the best ways to expand agricultural production and efficiency.

Hannah Kerner—an assistant professor at Arizona State University and the AI and Machine Learning Lead for NASA Harvest and NASA Acres—was awarded a research grant in 2021 through NASA’s equity and environmental justice initiative to assist Maui County in increasing local food production.

Kerner’s objective is to create a data dashboard using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence fed by on-the-ground data. This information will allow farmers, community leaders and policymakers to monitor and analyze crop conditions across Maui County and address food insecurity based on real-time data, filling a long-term knowledge gap that government agricultural surveys have not adequately addressed.

“There’s a need at the basic level to be able to monitor how much food and where food is being grown in the county,” Kerner said. To achieve this, Kerner’s team created crop-type maps, or high-resolution spatial maps specific to each crop type.

An older man works with a college-aged student to hold a chicken over a bucket

Student Gabriel Tseng helps Uncle George Kahumoku with a chicken during a visit to Uncle George’s farm. 

Permission granted by Hannah Kerner

 

While collecting satellite imagery from above, Kerner’s team also worked with the University of Hawai’i Maui College to collect ground truth, or information known to be true and accurate via measurement and direct observation, by surveying agricultural land and interviewing farmers. Through machine learning, this data is used to train models to predict gaps in the local food supply and issues with access.

The vast majority of Hawai’i’s 7,300 farms, small in scale and often located on sloped or rocky terrain, do not utilize large machines to cultivate the land as is characteristic of large commercial operations on the mainland, relying instead on a workforce. As a result, labor is often expensive and less productive.

Most active small-scale farms across Hawai’i have annual sales below $10,000, according to a 2021 report by the Economic Research Organization at the University of Hawai’i.

Source: fooddive.com

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