Where can you look for the data you need?

Know what you want to know, but not where to find it? Tired of trawling through endless websites that aren’t quite what you wanted? If your search is related to farming and climate, two of our colleagues have produced a possible answer. 

Climate change is a global threat to food security. It needs to be addressed urgently. Our Foundation’s strategy for 2025 includes the integration of climate-smart, resilient agriculture approaches into all our work.

As part of this process, two of our East African employees have compiled a useful list. It provides an overview of about 15 satellite-based agricultural monitoring systems. Wycliffe Kiplagat and Stephen Okeyo are making this list available to all our website visitors. “We hope that bringing together a range of sources in one place will help users make good decisions”, says Wycliffe from our Insurance team. “The service should support resource allocation decisions related to food security, crop monitoring and climate effects on farming systems.”

The list was born out of a practical need. “I was preparing a document for a funder”, explains Stephen, a Monitoring & Evaluation Officer. His write-up was meant to include lots of environmental information related to climate change and relevant for one of our programs. “At first I found the hunt for appropriate websites pretty time-consuming”, Stephen adds. He then wisely checked with Wycliffe, who had already been collecting such tools. “That solved my problem”, comments Stephen. “But we also saw an opportunity to share our combined list more widely.”

As the document says, its two authors look forward to users’ comments, suggestions, and questions!