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Last year, as the harvest season drew closer, Olabokunde Tope came across an unpleasant surprise. 

While certain spots on his 70-hectare cassava farm in Ibadan, Nigeria, were thriving, a sizable parcel was pale and parched—the result of an early and unexpected halt in the rains. The cassava stems, starved of water, had withered to straw. 

“It was a really terrible experience for us,” Tope says, estimating the cost of the loss at more than 50 million naira ($32,000). “We were praying for a miracle to happen. But unfortunately, it was too late.”  

When the next planting season rolled around, Tope’s team weighed different ways to avoid another cycle of heavy losses. They decided to work with EOS Data Analytics, a California-based provider of satellite imagery and data for precision farming. The company uses wavelengths of light including the near-infrared, which penetrates plant canopies

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