International Meeting on Food Security, Earth Observations and Agricultural Monitoring

Improving crop yield assessment and forecasting at the global level is a priority in order to better plan food availability and cope with the world demand regarding agricultural goods. This was clearly recognized at the G20 Summit in 2011 under the French presidency; where practical measures were agreed on to cope with a range of food security issues. More specifically, the GEO (Group on Earth Observation) Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative (GEOGLAM) was one of the measures that were decided at the G20 Summit, aimed at improving Earth Observation efforts to monitor agriculture and support crop prediction at the global level. 

Secure World Foundation (SWF), European Commission (EC) and the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Secretariat are partnering this year to organize an international meeting under the banner "Food Security, Earth Observations and Agricultural Monitoring".

The purpose of this meeting is to assess the situation regarding global observational facilities, models, and derived services needed to meet the demand in developed and developing countries regarding agricultural production. The workshop should report on the progress made in implementing Global Observation Systems for services in the domain of monitoring aspects of agricultural production. Current, planned and potential activities will be reviewed, as well as progress made for obtaining the necessary resources to implement those activities. The workshop will contribute to the implementation plan necessary to put in place the GEOGLAM system, as well as to identify the necessary resources to sustain it with attention to national capacity development and food security.

The one-day conference will be held in Brussels on Thursday, November 21st. 2013 at the premises of Secure World Foundation located on Rue de la Science 14B, 1040 Brussels. 

• To see the conference programme click here.
• To see the biographies of the experts speakers click here.
• To see the confrence summary click here.

The following are presentations from our expert speakers from the conference including:

The GEO Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) Program

• The GEO Global Agricultural Monitoring Program: an introduction (J. Soares, GEO Sec) 
• GEOGLAM Global and EO Components: progress to date(C. Justice, UMD) 
• Research Component: JECAM progress to date (I. Jarvis, Agri-foodCanada) 
• Asia-Rice initiative: status of a regional initiative (S. Shin-Ichi, Jaxa) 
• The potential of the Copernicus Sentinels for Agriculture Monitoring ( B. Koetz, ESA) 

Global and Regional initiatives/programs in food security monitoring

• Copernicus Global Land Programme (M. Massart, EC - ENTR) 
• MESA: Monitoring Environment and Security in Africa (M. Jambou, EC - DEVCO)
• FEWSNet (J. Verdin USGS, USAID FEWSNet) 
• EC: SIGMA and AGRICAB (L. Bydekerke, VITO) 
• EC: MARS Forecasting (O. Leo, EC- JRC) 
• USDA forecasting on international crop production as part of the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report (J. Crutchfield, USDA)

Overview of National agricultural monitoring activities

• Argentina (C. Di Bella, INTA, Argentina) 
• China (W. Bingfang, RADI, China) 
• Ukraine (N. Kussul, SRI, Ukraine) 
• Australia (K. Harlel, ABARES, Australia) 
• Canada (I. Jarvis, Agri-FoodCanada, Canada) 
• South Africa (T. Newby, CSIR, South Africa) 
• USA (D. Johnson, NASS, USA) 
• India (K.R. Manjunath, ISRO, India) 
• Russia (S. Bartalev, IKI, Russia) 
• An Africa perspective (T. Korme, RCMRD, Kenya)

GEOGLAM Implementation

• Progress on GEOGLAM Implementation and required resources (M. Deshayes, GEO Sec)

 For further information, please contact Natassa Antoniou.