Science Against Hunger: Monitoring and Forecasting Tools To Avoid Food Crises

Research institutions provide methods and tools that enable rapid access to databases and analysis worldwide, allowing thorough monitoring, forecasting and decision-making by all actors in the food chain. This presentation looks at the role of scientific policy research in the area of global food security, and details examples from outlook-oriented analyses following the different time horizons with a specific focus on the contribution of ICT.

Long-term oriented studies (10 to 50 years) explore possible futures and permit us to understand the consequences of human activities in the context of limited resources.

Medium-term analysis (1 to 10 years) improves knowledge on the tendencies of market fundamentals, for instance supply and demand imbalance under a business as usual scenario.

Short-term crop yield predictions (3-6 months) are essential for improved global governance of food security since they capture inter-annual variability due to climatic conditions, while econometric models translate general trends. 

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission has developed, in cooperation with other institutions, complex monitoring and forecasting tools, keeping in view the related uncertainties.                                                                                                                        

The MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System provides early estimates of crop yield and production during the season to the European Union; the system will be extended to cover the main production areas of the world for reliable and early estimates of global crop production. Results will be made available to the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) at FAO in the frame of the G-20 Action Plan. The MARS system is also used and shared with FAO to issue Early Warning System on countries at risks and identify local hot spots of food security crisis. 

The European Media Monitor exploits the real-time availability of news in the World Wide Web. The quantity and geographical distribution of news for instance can be used as an early indicator of the importance of a food crisis in a specific country in Africa.

DataM is a tool and database system, developed to simplify the daily data work of analysts and modellers in agriculture, either to feed economic models, to check data or to analyse results. With its unique interface users can rapidly access the main agricultural and trade databases, as well as economic model databases.

These and many more monitoring and outlook systems are the result of the sophisticated interplay of science and ICT. They allow us to learn from the past, understand the present and have a more systematic analysis of the future food situation.