While its need was initially acknowledged in a Regional Workshop on Crop Monitoring hosted in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2012, and AmeriGEO was established in 2015, it was not until 2018 with support from NASA’s Capacity Building Program, that proper coordination and leadership of a Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture focus area was launched. AMA works throughout the Americas, convening an open community of diverse actors who are engaged in agricultural assessment and monitoring to promote timely and accurate understanding of agricultural land use, productivity, and sustainability. Its objectives are strengthening national systems’ monitoring capabilities through Earth observations and fostering within-region international collaboration around research, development, and operational implementation of monitoring tools for important crop types and rangeland/pasture areas in the Americas.

In the past two years, the AMA-WG has gained participation from experts from ministries of agriculture, space agencies, universities, and industry from over twenty institutes in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, the United States, and Uruguay. Based on initial baseline assessment of needs, we have convened multiple webinars and conference sessions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese language. We have launched a community-curated resource forum to promote discovery, access, and preservation of regional EO-based resources. We have facilitated intra-national discussions in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, enabling more effective resource mobilization for shared objectives related to food security and agricultural production. We have undertaken research in the context of JECAM to advance monitoring techniques and tools. We have enriched within-region capacity for monitoring of key crops, and in general increased awareness of GEO, GEOGLAM, and space agency resources for agricultural assessment.