How Harvest2Market Connects Crop, Trade, and Food Security Data
Food security analysts often need to track disruptions that cascade across multi-faceted supply chain networks. Events like drought, conflict, or severe storms can reduce crop production, tighten fertilizer supplies, disrupt trade flows, and raise food prices far beyond the region where they originate. The information used to monitor those risks exists in distinct formats such as satellite imagery, global crop monitor reports, market indicators, shipping data, and food security assessments, but much of it is siloed. NASA Harvest developed a web-based, open access tool, Harvest2Market, to bring those pieces together into a single platform for agricultural monitoring and analysis.
NASA Harvest’s Markets, Trade, & Supply Chains Co-Leads, Mike Humber and Fernanda Argueta recently presented Harvest2Market at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) AI for Food Security Forum, where they discussed the use of Earth observation data and agricultural monitoring tools to support global food security analysis. During the event, Argueta also recorded a demonstration of the platform, showing how users can explore crop conditions, trade relationships, and food security indicators within Harvest2Market.
During the demonstration, Argueta used Bangladesh as an example of how Harvest2Market connects multiple layers of agricultural and food security information. Bangladesh produces 7% of the world’s rice based on recent five-year averages and relies heavily on fertilizer imports that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Harvest2Market signaled ongoing trade disruptions as a possible factor affecting Bangladesh future rice production. The platform also provided current crop conditions, trade data, and food security indicators tied to import dependence and market vulnerability.
Harvest2Market was developed with support from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and brings together datasets from NASA Harvest and partner organizations into a single platform. The tool also integrates information from the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor system, which provides monthly assessments of crop conditions and agricultural risks around the world. By combining Earth observation data with market and food security information, the tool is designed to help users by flagging disruptions via crop monitor events supplemented with country and subnational level data to assess their own food supply chain related risks. As well as assess their own vulnerability and highlight preliminary effects to connected regions. .
As climate shocks, conflict, and supply chain disruptions increasingly overlap, food security monitoring is becoming less about tracking a single event and more about understanding how connected systems respond under stress. Harvest2Market reflects NASA Harvest’s broader effort to make Earth observation data more accessible by helping analysts, researchers, and decision makers monitor agricultural risks as they develop across regions and markets.