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New (6-Feb-2006)!!
Geoland-OFM yield
forecasting service: This website allows you interactively query and analyze
of crop indicators and yield forecasts. During 2006 this website will be extended
with results from our project activities in Norther China.
Introduction
The geoland observatory on Food Security and crop monitoring focuses on developing
a global crop yield and crop area forecasting service. Its political motivation
stems from the wish to eradicate hunger and malnutrition from the world, through
raising agricultural productivity and, as a last resort, to provide timely food
aid. Policy-making in agriculture and organizing food aid require information
on where and when shortages and surpluses occur. This makes Food Security one
of the key public goods which require continuous attention world-wide for its
monitoring, with the possibility to zoom in to the level of countries, provinces
and districts.
In a broader perspective, information on the outlook on yield and
production of crops over large regions is essential for government
services dealing with import and export of food crops, for agencies
with a role in food relief, for international organizations with a
mandate in monitoring the world food production and trade, and for
commodity traders.
Methods
From a methodological point of view, geoland OFM aims at identifying the optimum
mix of methods for early assessment of production of the world's main food crops
for world-wide application at the level of countries and provinces. These methods
include the ones in use in the MARS-Crop Yield Forecasting System (CGMS (Alterra),
and various vegetation indicators derived from Low Resolution VGT Images (VITO)),
NOAA-AVHRR based methods in use in Poland by IGiK, MeteoSAT based yield forecasting
with EWBMS used by EARS and ERS-Scatterometer based Crop Performance Index developed
by TPF and NEO.
The resulting information products should be understood and trusted by the
end users and form useful input in their analytical work. The methods include
the monitoring of the status of annual field crops during the growing season,
resulting in a prediction of crop yield, and the estimation of the cultivated
acreage. The combination of crop yield and cultivated areas leads to an estimate
of regional crop production. Up-to-date information on the outlook for crop
production is required especially on regions with high climatic risk of crop
failures and on the major production regions.
For achieving its goals geoland OFM has selected test sites with high data
availability where the various methods will applied, followed by comparison
of their performance. In the first phase (2004 & 2005) the methods are tested
for cereals in Poland, Belgium and Spain. In the second phase the new test region
will be the Northern China Plain.
GeoNetwork
In order to bring the crop yield indicators and yield estimates to the end
user, geoland OFM will make use of the GeoNetwork infrastructure that has been
developed by FAO and others. By integrating the geoland OFM service with the
infrastructure that is provided by one of the main end users itself, the service
can be easily integrated in the users workflow and administrative processes.
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