NASA Harvest to Tackle Food Security as Part of Google.org AI Collaborative

The initiative will harness AI to better understand agriculture and strengthen food systems

College Park, MD, [09/15/25] – NASA Harvest, NASA’s Global Food Supply and Agriculture Consortium, monitors crop conditions and food availability around the world using satellite data. These insights help shape better policies, assess global trade impacts, and improve decision making in food and agriculture systems. While the consortium has tools and expertise to rapidly assess the impacts of crises on agricultural production—including extreme weather events, and conflicts and wars—meeting the growing demand for such evaluations has stretched the program’s core capacity.

Today, NASA Harvest is expanding this work as part of Google.org's AI Collaborative: Food Security. NASA Harvest is one of a group of organizations that will receive funding from Google.org and join in a collaborative effort to help make food systems stronger for vulnerable populations. This funding will support the use of AI technology, collaborative research, data sharing, and coordinated action, to address a crisis affecting billions of people.

As part of the AI Collaborative, NASA Harvest aims to help predict potential food shortfalls at earlier stages and inform post-disaster response. This extra time will enable response preparations to begin earlier by harnessing cutting-edge advances in satellite remote sensing and AI to deliver transparent, timely, and actionable insights in response to food system shocks—whether from extreme weather, conflict, or market volatility. 

“We launched Harvest in 2017, and almost from the beginning, we regularly received requests for rapid assessments of the impact of droughts, floods, and armed conflict on agricultural production—often in regions where ground access is limited or not possible. But we lacked the surge capacity—a dedicated rapid response team—to deliver actionable, satellite driven assessments in real time,” NASA Harvest Founding Director Inbal Becker-Reshef said. “Google.org’s funding enables us to step back, look at the big picture, and build a collaborative international rapid agricultural assessment center that can be sustained and scaled with global partners,” adds NASA Harvest Co-Director Christopher Justice.

The AI Collaborative is Google.org’s new funding approach that brings together organizations across sectors to develop AI-powered solutions that address today’s most urgent challenges. The Food Security initiative is the second major focus area, following the launch of the AI Collaborative: Wildfires earlier this year. The AI Collaborative: Food Security convenes a network of public, private, and nonprofit organizations and researchers to supercharge collective impact through three key pillars: getting further ahead of hunger crises, future-proofing food systems, and equipping farmers with AI tools.

“AI offers immense potential to address complex, global challenges like hunger, which impacts billions of people," Alex Diaz, Google.org’s Head of AI for Social Good said. "The AI Collaborative: Food Security brings together a unique network of experts and innovators to build more resilient food systems for the most vulnerable communities." 

For more information about NASA Harvest’s efforts to help address hunger, visit https://www.nasaharvest.org/.

About NASA Harvest

NASA Harvest is NASA’s Global Food Supply and Agriculture Consortium, an interdisciplinary initiative led by the University of Maryland and commissioned by NASA’s Earth Science Division. Established in 2017, it leverages satellite Earth observations to generate actionable insights that enhance agricultural resilience, food market stability, and supply chain transparency worldwide. 

The consortium brings together scientists, economists, policy experts, and technologists from across the public and private sectors to harness satellite Earth observations, artificial intelligence, and data science in support of more sustainable and resilient agricultural systems. Its mission is to enable the widespread adoption of satellite-based information by decision-makers to enhance food security, monitor crop conditions, and respond rapidly and effectively to agricultural disruptions.