Strengthening agricultural decisions in countries at risk of food insecurity: The GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning.

Global, timely, and reliable information on crop conditions and early warning of impending shortfalls of crop production are critical components for achieving food security and ensuring sufficient, reliable food availability and access. Earth observations (EO) provide a significant contribution towards providing crucial information about crop conditions and production, owing to their global, repeatable, and synoptic nature and ability to provide quantitative indicators of crop development throughout the growing season. The Crop Monitor for Early Warning (CM4EW), based largely on remotely sensed information, is a source of such information. The CM4EW was developed in the framework of the international G20 Group on Earth Observations Global Agriculture Monitoring (GEOGLAM) Initiative, in response to the pressing need for enhanced early warning of crop shortfalls and for better coordination across the various agencies responsible for crop assessments in regions most at risk to food insecurity. Building upon the existing Crop Monitor for the Agricultural Monitoring Information System (CM4AMIS), the CM4EW provides monthly international consensus assessment of crop conditions in countries at risk of food insecurity. It uses EO data together with meteorological information, field observations and ground reports to fill information gaps related to food security at the global scale, thereby addressing the need for more complete and reliable information for countries at risk of food insecurity. In this context, the CM4EW serves to reduce uncertainty and strengthen decision support by providing actionable information, on a monthly basis, to national, regional and international agencies concerned with food security, through timely consensus assessment of crop conditions. Operational since February 2016, the CM4EW has become an internationally recognized source of reliable information on early warning and crop conditions and often used to inform humanitarian organization decisions on food allocation and assistance. Based on its successful implementation globally, the Crop Monitor model is now being scaled and adapted for implementation within national ministries of agriculture in East Africa to enhance the use and uptake of remote sensing data into crop monitoring activities and better inform food security decisions at national scale.