The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) signed a five-year agreement to examine satellite data’s role in crop statistics, without committing to projects or spending.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins signed the memorandum of understanding Saturday, Oct. 24, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa during NASA’s Inspiration Tour. USDA said it took effect immediately.
The MOU outlines possible technical exchanges to align USDA’s statistical needs with NASA missions and data products, as well as discussions about NASA data archives, geospatial formats, APIs and workflows. The agencies may review methods for crop-condition indicators, planted and harvested area estimates, yield models and disaster impact assessments. The document also lists bias correction, uncertainty analysis and checks against ground data.
The agreement creates no legal obligation to collaborate or spend money. Each agency is to use its own resources for its activities; work involving transfers of funds, services, property or personnel between them requires separate written agreements and is subject to available appropriations.
USDA’s data modernization plan says many producers consider its surveys burdensome. Producer response rates have declined over the past couple of decades, and confidence in some reports has fallen, the plan says. USDA aims to improve statistical quality while reducing what it asks producers to report.
The signing came a day after USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) disclosed an error in September 2026 corn data. In a follow-up notice Saturday, NASS said incorrect acreage weights had been used to combine irrigated and non-irrigated observations in Kansas and Nebraska. Corrected September yield forecasts were 119 bushels per acre for Kansas, 182 for Nebraska and 178.8 for the United States; October forecasts were unchanged. Neither agency’s announcement nor the MOU links the correction to the agreement.
Isaacman said combining NASA’s data and technical expertise with USDA’s agricultural knowledge could “improve the information available to farmers and ranchers.” NASA announced a separate agricultural research agreement with USDA in December 2020.
The new MOU runs for five calendar years unless ended earlier. Either agency may terminate it with three months’ written notice, and the agreement sets no implementation milestone.
