Eyes on Earth Episode 37 – Insuring West Africa’s Crops

The Green Revolution leaned on fertilizers, drought-resistant seeds and other modern innovations to boost agricultural production across much of the planet in the second half of the 20th Century. But many of those innovations never reached West Africa, partially because the lack of social safety nets and crop insurance made such investments too risky. On this episode of Eyes on Earth, we hear about a new product called index insurance that could help encourage yield-boosting investments by small holder farmers in West Africa, and how EROS data might be used to refine and improve the product.