It says “scientists will use these
soil moisture measurements to help improve our understanding of processes that
affect weather and climate, and in turn, agricultural production.”
There seems to be an assumption that this data
will only be collected over Canadian farms, but the Canadian Wheat Board, when
it held a monopoly on exports, used satellites to keep track of crops in
customer and competing nations.
That was deemed far more valuable than data on
Canadian crops because the Canadian Wheat Board was in a good position to judge
how Canadian crops were faring.
Agriculture Canada says in its news release that
the U.S. launched launched the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite
from California on Jan. 31.
“This mission will produce the most accurate,
highest-resolution global maps of soil moisture, temperature and freeze-thaw
cycles ever obtained from space.
“The information will be particularly useful for
the agriculture sector by helping to improve weather prediction and crop
productivity models, monitoring areas affected by drought or excess moisture
and improving flood forecasts,” the federal agriculture department news release
says.
