Global Monitoring

Two monthly global crop condition reports have been established within GEOGLAM. In 2013, directly in response to the G20 policy mandate, the monthly crop monitor for the Agricultural Market Information System was developed. Subsequently, building on the success of the AMIS monitor and realizing the approach could be applied to food security, the Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW) was launched in 2016. The tabs below lead to more information on these monitoring reports and the many partner initiatives that provide support to them.

GEOGLAM Crop Monitor, for the Agricultural Monitoring Information System (AMIS)

Crop monitor reports

About the AMIS Crop Monitor: The AMIS crop monitor was launched by GEOGLAM in 2013 as a direct response to the G20 Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture. GEOGLAM provides a framework which strengthens the international community’s capacity to produce and disseminate relevant, timely and accurate consensus based forecasts of agricultural production at national, regional and global scales through the use of Earth Observations (EO) including satellite and ground-based observations. This initiative is designed to build on a consensus existing agricultural monitoring programs and initiatives at national, regional and global levels and to enhance and strengthen them through international networking, operationally focused research, and data/method sharing.

Within this framework, GEOGLAM developed the Crop Monitor reports which provide global crop condition assessments in support of the AMIS market monitoring activities. The first issue of the Crop Monitor appeared in the September 2013 issue of the AMIS Market Monitor.

Each month 44 partners come together with their own monitoring and in-situ observations to address discrepancies and create a consensus report. Because it is a consensus of all the best science based information plus on the ground experience the end product is considered to be the authoritative source of current global growing conditions, Consequently partnership are key to the entire process and several of our partner monitoring products can be accessed from the links below:

NASA Harvest: smart decision making for food security and agriculture

Visit NASA Harvest

China CropWatch Bulletin                                                                                                  

Visit China CropWatch

UN FAO GIEWS - Global Information and Early Warning System

Visit FAO GIEWS

EC Joint Research Center Mapping Agricultural Resources (MARS)

Visit EC JRC MARS

USDA FAS Crop Explorer                                                                                                  

Visit USDA FAS Crop Explorer

USDA Global Agricultural & Disaster Assessment System               

Visit USDA GADAS

Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW) and Special Bulletins

While the AMIS Market Monitor and Crop Monitor reports focus strongly on agricultural production and markets in large producer countries, the methods for creating the Crop Monitor for AMIS reports have shown to be transferrable to food security applications. So building on the success of the AMIS monitors the methods were adapted and applied to countries at risk of food production shortfalls. First published in February 2016, the Crop Monitor for Early Warning monitors many countries not covered by the AMIS reports.

Each month 14 partners from the global food security response community come together with their own monitoring and in-situ observations to address discrepancies and create a consensus report. Because it is a consensus of all the best science based information plus on the ground experience, the end product is considered to be the authoritative source of current global growing conditions. Partnerships are key to the entire process and several of our partner monitoring products can be accessed from the links below:

NASA Harvest: smart decision making for food security and agriculture

Visit NASA Harvest

EC JRC, Anomaly Hotspots of Agricultural Production (ASAP)

Visit EC JRC ASAP

Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET)

Visit FEWS NET

China CropWatch Bulletin                                                                                                  

Visit China CropWatch

WFP Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM)

Visit WFP VAM

UN FAO GIEWS - Global Information and Early Warning System

Visit FAO GIEWS

Rangeland

Rangeland and pasture Productivity (RAPP)

Visit GEOGLAM RAPP

National to Regional Monitoring

Building on the success of the global Crop Monitor for Early Warning GEOGLAM began working with mandated national agencies responsible for food security policy and response programs. The result has been several examples of co-developed Crop Monitors at the national and regional level. These monitors are developed and operated by the countries close to the program and policy decision makers. As a result the information produced is trusted and deemed authoritative allowing it to be quickly turned into proactive decisions that impact lives and livelihood, while reducing the cost of emergency response.

In 2019 a Capacity Development Working Group (CapD WG) was established to share co-development experiences within the community and develop best practices with the objective to accelerate the uptake of national monitoring. The draft terms of reference for the CapD WG can be found here.

Beyond national impact, the national and regional crop monitors play a significant role in improving the quality of the global crop monitors for AMIS and the Crop Monitor for Early Warning by supplementing global top down data flows with bottom up national level data. The result is better resolution and accuracy due to better in-situ information and expertise input into the monitors.

Examples of national implementation in major producers and food insecure nations can be found here:

Examples of regional crop monitoring activities can be found here:

Monitoring Tools

Over the course of GEOGLAM several of the research activities have resulted in operational tools for agricultural monitoring. GEOGLAM is currently working with the GEO secretariat to develop end to end (research to tool implementation) solutions in the GEO Knowledge Hub. To this end the Sen2Agri tools are being used as a proof of concept for the hub. Upon its successful implementation the GEOGLAM community anticipates curating much of its intellectual capital through the KH platform to provide a one stop shop for institutions looking to implement operational agricultural monitoring systems. In the meantime some of the key tools that have been developed by the community can be found at the following links:


CONTACT
  • GEOGLAM Secretariat
    geoglam@geosec.org

 
  • GEO Secretariat
    7 Bis avenue de la Paix
    1211 Geneva
    Switzerland