SBIC Noordwijk congratulates Cheetah with winning the ESA App Challenge 2013. Cheetah obtains crop-sourcing information from Copernicus Sentinel-2 (and MERIS) on land coverage and crop phenology products. Market price information is partly crowd-sourced and augments existing third-party services related to crop market value.
Taking on a billion-dollar problem in Africa
Cheetah:
– Amplifies the voices of value chain players by allowing them to report shortcomings (delays, bribes, unforeseen costs resulting from vehicle breakdowns due to poorly paved roads) to exact accountability from officials;
– Collects improved data on road pavement quality and post-harvest losses to help drive behavioral, policy and infrastructure improvements;
– Provides on-the-ground intelligence to decrease unforeseen expenditures for traders;
– Sources food crops with the support of ESA Copernicus Sentinels to improve business planning.
Customer Benefit
– Fairer prizes for growers and transporters;
– Lower market prices for consumers;
– Road maintenance planning through Labor-intensive Public Works (subcontracting to local engineers) is made possible;
– Crowd-sourcing such value chain information is cost-saving compared to traditional data collection techniques now in use to report barriers to regional trade (delays, bribes, bad road pavement conditions).
“A full one-third of global food production is lost post-harvest. To address the global food security issue, Cheetah’s novel approach combines crowdsourcing with Earth observation data and a particular focus on the production and transportation of crops in Africa.”
