Satellite monitoring of quantity and quality of available biomass in pastoral livestock systems

Executive Summary

Pastoral livestock production contributes 46% of GDP and is key to LAC's food and social security. Currently, pastoral bovine production systems face the challenge of increasing their profitability by reducing their environmental impact, since high costs and a growing concern about their contribution to global warming threaten their development. Knowing the quantity and quality of available biomass is key to making management decisions that improve the productive efficiency and profitability of these livestock systems, while enabling the monitoring, reporting and verification of the effect of GHG emission mitigation strategies. However, frequent field measurements that cover an entire property are expensive and often impractical. Over the last five years, the availability of satellite data on a spatial and temporal scale compatible with weekly management decisions of individual paddocks has advanced enormously, and prediction models of the quantity and quality of biomass based on remote sensors are starting to appear. For this technology to result in productive improvements, it is necessary to have reliable, locally validated models and mechanisms that make the information available to different users. The main objective of this project is to lower the cost of estimating in real time and with adequate precision the quantity and quality of biomass available in pastoral livestock systems through a satellite tool. The project is funded by the New Zealand Government as part of its contribution to the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA).

The technological solution

Lower the cost of estimating in real time and with adequate precision the quantity and quality of biomass available in livestock systems in LAC through a satellite tool.

Results

Beneficiaries

The direct beneficiaries of the project are, on the one hand, livestock producers in pastoral systems of Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia and Costa Rica, who will have information that will allow them to improve grazing management decisions and therefore forage harvesting and profitability of their systems; and on the other hand, the government entities in charge of GHG emission inventories that will be able to more accurately quantify the magnitude and intensity of GHG emissions and thus monitor, report and verify the effectiveness of national mitigation policies.

Sustainable Development Goals

Main donors

Dissemination products