Crop Monitoring for Food Security from Space: Challenges, Progress, and Limitations

The importance of crop monitoring activities has dramatically increased over the last years, in particular following the 2007-2008 food price crises. A global perspective and data infrastructure is required to address highly differentiated agricultural realities ranging from food insecure/drought-prone areas to emerging countries and key commodity exporters. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is playing a substantial role in developing innovative methods for crop monitoring using satellite data and agro-climatic models. The early warning and crop yield prediction capacities of the JRC support the European Commission in planning food aid and in reinforcing existing information systems in regions stricken by food shortages, such as the Horn of Africa. More than 40 regional bulletins are published each year by the JRC providing qualitative and quantitative yield forecasts. JRC bulletins are freely available online at http://mars.jrc.ec.europa.eu/mars and support decision-making within the European Commission, Governments and International organizations. Large efforts have been dedicated over recent years to improve coordination among the main international actors in food security information management such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), and the European Commission. In this context, the development and implementation of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is a milestone in bringing scientific results closer to the decision making process. The IPC, recently developed by a partnership of the main international actors in Food Security, is a standardised scale that integrates food security, nutrition and livelihood information in a clear statement about the nature and severity of a crisis. It provides a common language and reference on the basis of which all stakeholders can agree on the analysis of the food security situation and possible response options. Examples will be shown of the role of Earth Observation (EO) products in drought monitoring and yield forecasting in comparison with other systems and under difficult circumstances. Discussion inputs will be provided on the advantages and present limitations of remote-sensing derived indicators for providing timely and accurate information to decision makers. Other food-security related developments not directly based on EO products will also be discussed, such as the Post Harvest Losses Information System, an innovative system developed under JRC coordination for calculating possible cereal deficits.