G20 Announces Continued Support for GEOGLAM
Agricultural Ministers from across the G20 met in Hyderabad, India on June 16-17, 2023 to discuss the challenges facing the global community in terms of agricultural production, supply chain disruptions, and food security. One organization endorsed during the meeting is the GEOGLAM (Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring) Initiative, whose purpose is to strengthen the international community’s capacity to utilize coordinated, comprehensive, and sustained Earth observations in support of food security.
GEOGLAM, an initiative of the G20, was created in 2011 in response to unexpected food price shocks with the mandate of increasing market transparency and bolstering food security by creating and disseminating actionable reports for policymakers. GEOGLAM is an international community whose members contribute resources to its mission.
NASA Harvest Consortium is NASA’s contribution to GEOGLAM, leading the GEOGLAM Crop Monitors and the Essential Agricultural Variables Initiative, which provide open, timely, and science-driven information on crop conditions in the interest of economic stability and early warning of production shortfalls. Harvest works with international partners like GEOGLAM; contributing satellite-based Earth Observation (EO) tools, applications, and analysis to help organizations conduct their work.
Increasing Agricultural Resiliency
The assembled G20 Agricultural Ministers discussed various obstacles facing the global community on the way to improving food and nutrition security.
One topic they addressed was improving resilience of agricultural markets, particularly through the strengthening of supply chains, production monitoring, and the development of national capacity.
NASA Harvest is helping improve the transparency of global agricultural supply chains through tools like our online Harvest2Market platform, the Agrometeorological (AGMET) Earth Observation Indicators tool, and the Global Agriculture Monitoring (Harvest GLAM) System. These openly available online platforms allow users to analyze crop conditions, markets, and supply chain logistics.
The Consortium also helps improve awareness of and build actionable intelligence on in-season growing conditions of crops around the world. Our partnership with GEOGLAM and the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), has resulted in the creation of: the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for AMIS, a monthly report outlining growing conditions of the major commodity crops wheat, maize, soy, and rice within major exporting nations; the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning, a monthly report detailing growing conditions of a broader range of food security crops for food insecure nations, and; the GEOGLAM Global Crop Monitor, a monthly synthesized report based on the Crop Monitor for AMIS, the Crop Monitor for Early Warning, and direct submissions from individual countries.
In addition to these globally-focused reports, Harvest has also worked with governments in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania to create national level crop monitors. These reports are the result of capacity building efforts within each country including the development of user-friendly online EO data systems and advanced mobile field data collection tools.
Developing A Sustainable Agriculture
Another topic discussed during the G20 meeting was the importance of developing sustainable agriculture practices that allow for improved productivity while also safeguarding the environment for future generations.
Through the Harvest Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture (SARA) Initiative, NASA Harvest and Acres are helping to answer how farmers and stakeholders can make the agricultural sector environmentally sustainable and economically resilient. By investigating the quantitative impacts of different management practices like cover cropping, tillage, and irrigation on outcomes like yields, soil health, and water quality, Harvest SARA is influencing the future of sustainable agriculture.
NASA Harvest is proud of its continuing partnership with GEOGLAM and looks forward to continuing to work together with the global agricultural monitoring community of practice, to combat pressing issues impacting global agricultural resilience, sustainability, and food security. You can read the entire Meeting Outcome Document and Chair’s Summary here.