KU researcher predicts farm productivity across Kansas and the nation

LAWRENCE — Jude Kastens grew up on the High Plains of Kansas tending cattle and crops on his family’s farm in Rawlins County. As a youth, he learned that accurate forecasting of weather and harvest yields enables a farmer to choose which crops to plant and when to bring them to market.

Today, Kastens draws on his agricultural upbringing as a research assistant professor with the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing program at the University of Kansas. But rather than watching wheat and corn grow from atop a tractor, now Kastens monitors an array of crops across Kansas and the entire country using satellite imagery.

Jude Kastens on his family farm

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Research Matters: Talking with Jude Kastens

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About the GreenReport

In the spring of 1996, KARS began producing a bi-weekly map series called the GreenReport that measures vegetation conditions across the Unites States.
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“Farmers have to rely on a lot of information,” said Kastens. “Producers can use the information we provide to give them a better feel for what the overall crop will be like, and hopefully that will help them to make better marketing decisions.”

Kastens and colleagues analyze information and imagery from polar-orbiting satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They also publish a map series called the GreenReport that measures crop conditions and growth.

“The GreenReport is a real-time satellite image of photosynthetically active vegetation, or ‘greenness,’ from the lower 48 states,” Kastens said. “It shows you the condition of the vegetation at a particular point in time. The satellite image is updated on weekly basis, and we have a 19-year history for this database, so we can make meaningful comparisons to determine how the vegetation is doing right now, compared to previous years.”

Kastens and his colleagues at Kansas Applied Remote Sensing also produce crop yield forecasts based on the same imagery as the GreenReport, using historic crop yield data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to predict harvest yields for eight crops throughout the United States. Aside from farmers, consumers of the information include businesses, academics, investors and government agencies. These users can look at the entire nation’s vegetation or focus upon the Corn Belt or the Wheat Belt alone to compare those regions’ productivity to past years. Yield forecasts are produced at national, state and district levels.

For instance, the state of Kansas uses data gleaned from the GreenReport to assess drought on an ongoing basis.

According to Kastens, farmers in Kansas this year are facing a mix of conditions that depend on their locations within the state.

“In the southwest, the ongoing drought has taken a heavy toll on all crops,” he said. “East of the drought line, most producers are happy, particularly those in the central and northern parts of the state. In Rawlins County, we’ve been extremely lucky with back-to-back bumper wheat crops and a good fall crop in between. Statewide, trend-line yields were realized with the 2008 Kansas wheat crop, which should help many farmers given current high grain prices. The verdict is still out on the fall crops this year, such as corn, sorghum (milo) and soybeans. The potential is there for a good crop in much of the state, if the weather cooperates over the next two months.”

Before satellites were used to measure the growth of vegetation, producers and others relied on ground-based surveys and rainfall models to forecast crop yields. Today, Kastens and his fellow researchers regularly outperform forecasts of the USDA. As a result of their accuracy, TerraMetrics Agriculture Inc., a KU spin-off company in Lawrence, today is commercializing data collected and evaluated by Kastens and his colleagues.

Although Kastens spends much more time today performing cutting-edge research on crops than tending to them, he has not strayed too far from his roots in farm country.

“I go back to help out with wheat harvest whenever I can, which fortunately is most years,” Kastens said. “Of course that depends on if we have a crop or not, which doesn’t always happen out there. But we’ve been real fortunate these past few years. I’m not a farmer at heart. I don’t want to go back and farm myself. But I’m very excited that I have the opportunity to work in agriculture still and do this type of crop yield forecasting.”

Maps from KARS are viewable at www.kars.ku.edu/products/greenreport.shtml.