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Bulletins for North Africa , season 2016 - 2017, JRC.D.5-Food Security

This report is a JRC contribution to the FAO Global Strategy to improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics (GSARS). Its aim is providing guidelines on the suitable ways to use satellite images and geographic information tools to build master sampling frames that can be used both for agricultural and environmental statistics. The main readers to which the report is addressed are agricultural and environmental statisticians in developing countries. We consider separately the use of technological tools for area sampling frames and for list sampling frames. The use of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), better known as GPS, is also discussed, although its use is more connected to carrying out field surveys rather than to the design of sampling frames., JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources

The SPOT-VEGETATION mission operationally provided 15 years of remote sensing indicators of vegetation status. The mission reached its end-of-life in May 2014 and was timely replaced by the PROBA-V mission, aiming to ensure, among other objectives, the seamless continuity of provision of VGT-like products, including Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Exploiting the period of overlap when both instruments were functioning (November 2013 –May 2014), this study compared NDVI data provided by the SPOT-VGT and the PROBA-V instruments from the point of view of the user interested in operational crop monitoring and yield forecasting. The comparison is performed for the three North Africa country of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. All such countries, through different agencies and institutional arrangements, had in place an operational crop monitoring system that was based on 10-day composites of SPOT-VGT NDVI. In view of the operational crop monitoring season of 2015, when they will have to decide whether to continue their business-as-usual activities with the PROBA-V data (instead of SPOT-VGT), this study analysed the impact of the use of this new data source on the information being operationally derived and analysed for crop monitoring and yield forecasting: anomaly maps, temporal profiles and cereal yield figures (for barley, durum and soft wheat) estimated using semi-empirical regression models., JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources

El Niño is a periodic climate phenomenon defined by anomalously warm sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean which affect local weather worldwide and generally leads to increased drought risk at global level. In 2015, since July a strong El Niño is being observed with increasing intensity in September and October. It is expected to last for the first 3 months of 2016 and could reach a very high level of intensity in this period. To date, it has already affected climate in many parts of Asia and in the Northern parts of East Africa, causing serious rainfall deficits. Although the impact on agriculture is not directly proportional to the intensity of the climatic anomalies, the event is expected to impact East and Southern Africa in different ways. In East Africa, for the bimodal areas, El Niño events in the second half of the year usually lead to wetter than average conditions and are generally beneficial for agriculture. In other areas with a long crop season in the second half of the year, such as parts of Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea, it can cause drier than average conditions followed by rainfall at harvesting time causing drying problems. For both bimodal and single season zones it can lead to flooding in riverine areas and increase the risk of livestock diseases. On the contrary, in Southern Africa, strong El Niño events frequently cause drought and reduce crop production and this effect could be particularly dangerous considering the low crop production of this region in the 2014-2015 season. These risks need to be taken into consideration for response planning in East and Southern Africa and this report lists some main recomme, JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources

MARS Bulletin Vol.21 No. 6, JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources

MARS Bulletin Vol.21 No. 8, JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources

MARS Bulletin Vol.21 No. 7, JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resources