Cataloguing the radiation signature—and thus agricultural potential—of about 100,000 samples of African soils

In Africa, where many soils have become badly depleted of nutrients, better fertiliser management would go a long way.

As a consequence, the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi has begun cataloguing the radiation signature—and thus agricultural potential—of about 100,000 samples of African soils. It is giving this detailed information to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, based in Colombia, so that it can build a database called the Digital Soil Map.

When ready, this will provide farmers with free forecasts, developed with regularly updated satellite imagery, across farmland in 42 African countries. For a hunger-ravaged continent, that is good news indeed.

Reference:

From The Economist print edition Nov 5th 2009 Agriculture and satellites. Harvest moon
Artificial satellites are helping farmers boost crop yields

Related:

FARA blog post of 29 January 2009 African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) The first detailed digital soil map of sub-Saharan Africa