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(AGRI4CAST)

The action focuses on the European Commission Crop Yield Forecasting System aiming at providing accurate and timely crop yield forecasts and crop produc- tion biomass. Since 1992 AGRI4CAST has been developing and running a Crop Forecasting System at Pan-European level. This system monitors crop vegetation growth (cereal, oil seed crops, protein crops, sugar beet, potatoes, pastures, rice) and includes the short-term effects of meteorological events on crop pro- duction. The mandate is given through a regulation* stating its maintenance, operational run and analysis.

The system is made by remote sensing and meteorological observations, agro- meteorological modelling (Crop Growth Monitoring System, CGMS) and statisti- cal analysis tools.

During the 7th _{Framework programme 2007-2013, the action will put a clear}

emphasis on the impact of climate change on agricultural systems. As a conse- quence, the Crop Yield Forecasting System will be adapted in order to run on climatic scenarios at different levels (from 10 days to 100 years) to improve the crop yield forecasts but also to generate climate change impact scenario on farming systems.

AGRI4CAST is the repository of techniques developed using remote sensing and area frame sampling at European level to estimate crop areas.

Major 2008 achievements European Crop monitoring

The agricultural campaign throughout Europe was closely followed by our crop forecasts and regular weather updates provided to DG Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) and the Member States as well as being accessible to the public through the internet. The crops forecasted in the European Bulletin are wheat, barley, maize, sunflower rapeseed, sugar beet and potato. Dedicated bulletins are issued for pastures and rice. The international focus of the crop monitoring activities beyond the European Member States plays an important role and was further consolidated with the signature of Collaboration Agreements with partner institutions in Argentina, Morocco and Ukraine.

Asian Rice monitoring

For China and India quantitative rice yield forecasts at province, respectively state levels have been issued. This adds two new Crop Yield forecasting bulletins to the existing ones (MARS, European rice bulletin, MARS crop yield forecast for Europe, MARS European pasture bulletin). They are issued twice a year. Crop growth simulation, agro-meteorological analysis, yield forecasts and remote sensing analysis are all done in-house.

Crop models and components

AGRI4CAST develops and makes available software tools in cooperation with other public institutions. Emphasis is placed in the production of software components to simulate cropping systems. Software components are discrete software units which are reusable by third parties in custom developed applications. The software made available is grouped as Plant modelling, Agro-meteorology, and Other. In 2008 JRC-IPSC released a first version of the Crop Modelling Library, which is a

Contact Bettina Baruth Tel. +39 0332 786752 e-mail: [email protected] website: http://mars.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ mars/About-us/AGRI4CAST

A G R I 4 C A S T

The MARS Crop monitoring Bulletin Europe is issued 6 times a year containing crop yield forecasts for the major European crops, and agro-meteorological as well as remote sensing analysis.

Crop monitoring product from the MARS Remote Sensing infrastructure with the ranked cumulated NDVI for arable land for the cropping season 2008. A high rank indicates good vegetation conditions, and low rank low biomass accumulation.

* EC regulation 78/2008 of 21 January 2008 on the measures to be undertaken by the Commission in 2008-2013 making use of the remote sensing applications developed within the framework of the common agricultural policy

new platform for simulating crops growth. It implements a multi-model approach for crops growth, aiming at providing the user with a set of modelling solutions to be run in parallel or individually according to the specific needs/situation.

Study on agricultural insurances

The study focused on the assessment of index tools for agricultural insurances. Index insurances basically differ from traditional agricultural insurances in that they do not refer to the actual farm losses, but to the losses evaluated from an index. This index can be, for example, some area yield or revenue, some meteorological or agro-meteorological parameter or a satellite imagery param- eter. The analysis considered the coherence with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements and the effectiveness to deal with the risk of substantial income reduction of farmers. The analysis covered all 27 Member States of the European Union.

Best practices for crop area estimation with Remote Sensing

General assessments have been made of existing approaches for the use of remote sensing for land cover area estimation, and in particular for agricultural statistics. The assessment activity led in 2008 to the coordination of a best practices document for crop area estimation with Remote Sensing and recom- mendations for policy makers by the GEO-GEOSS community of practice on Earth Observation in the framework of the workshop ‘Crop Area Estimates with Remote Sensing’ organised by JRC-IPSC and the the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).

Climate change impact on agriculture and risk assessment

The strong biophysical modelling expertise in combination with the unique meteo-infrastructure made the AGRI4CAST action an ideal partner for the Panel on Plant Health of the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) to assess infection risks. The action work formed a substantial part of the scientific opinion on establishment risk of the Citrus Black Spot disease*.

Challenges for 2009 and beyond

AGRI4CAST will ensure the continuation of the applied activities as outlined by Council Regulation 78/2008 with pan-European crop monitoring and related crop yield forecasts. This comprises also the scientific development of new improvements related to the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System. Simulation capacities in terms of models and components hosted and developed within the model library will be extended and a software platform will be built allow- ing to be plugged in models and to let them run on JRC-IPSC’s databases, thus also enlarging the potential use of the information outside the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System.

For what concerns the scientific activities on climate change impact on agricul- ture, agricultural production systems will be simulated under current and future weather conditions to assess the impact of weather scenarios and explore the hypothesis of adaption, in order to support the EC policy agenda on Climate Change asking for sector orientated adaptation strategies. To do so the models will be adapted to account for climate change particularities and additional components will be developed (MARS model library).

AGRI4CAST will continue scientific and technical support to the LUCAS survey project (Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey) and run test pilot approaches for crop area estimates using area frame sampling and/or remote sensing in- formation.

Comparison between occurred plant heat stress between 1996-2007 and 1982-1993. Except for some costal zones values of plant heat stress have increased markedly in the last ten years. It has been calculated using ClimIndices, one of the software components developed at AGRI4CAST. ClimIndices offers routines to calculate weather indicators from multi-year series of daily weather data and is made publically available.

GLOSSARY

CGMS Crop Growth Monitoring System

DG AGRI DG Agriculture and Rural Development

EFSA European Food Safety Agency

GEO Group on Earth Observations

GEOSS The Global Earth Observation System of Systems

LUCAS Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey

NDVI Normalised Difference Vegeta- tion Index

WTO World Trade Organisation

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