Monitoring agriculture for market management and food security

Goals

Agricultural and agro-environmental monitoring, yield forecasting and early warning, deforestation and land use/land cover monitoring, are critical for policy makers. Accurate, timely and cost-effective approaches to these issues generally rely on the use of advanced methods, remote sensing data, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Moreover, upcoming satellites offer the possibility to improve some applications. In this conference, advanced methods developed so far are discussed, focusing on advantages, requirements and limitations.

Expected outcome

A wide audience will have an overview of the status of art for agricultural and agro-environmental monitoring, yield forecasting and early warning, deforestation and land use/land cover monitoring. Papers will have a solid scientific content, but will be presented targeting non-specialist EXPO visitors. The audience will include researchers and students of various disciplines related to food, agriculture and agro-environment, policy makers, public officers, public and private donors, UN Organizations, NGOs, farmers organizations, food industries, biofuel industries and other entrepreneurs for which timely and reliable quantitative information concerning food and agriculture is essential (producers of fertilizers, seeds, machinery for technical equipment, for packaging and so on

Monitoring agriculture for market management and food security

Organizers:

Paolo Pizziol – Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre, European Commission

Elisabetta Carfagna – Department of Statistical Sciences - Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna

11:00 Welcome – Neil Hubbard – Head of MARS Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre

11:15 Welcome – Fabio Fava, Professor, University of Bologna & Italian Representative Horizon2020 Programme Committee European Bioeconomy Challenges: Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research

Chairperson: Neil Hubbard – Head of MARS Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre

11:30 Opening – Paolo De Castro, S&D Coordinator, Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and Rapporteur for Expo 2015, European Parliament

11:50 Giampiero Genovese – Head of Unit Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy, Joint Research Centre
Improving agricultural statistics for market management, food security and agro-environmental monitoring

12:10 Paul Racionzer – Team Leader, GIEWS Database and Information Tools Team, Global Information and Early Warning System, Trade and Markets Division (EST), UNFAO
Earth Observation for Monitoring Agriculture in FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System

12:30 Stefan Niemeyer – Leader AGRI4CAST Action, Joint Research Centre
The MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System

12:50 Discussion

13.10 – 14:20 Lunch

14.20 – 14:50 Tour of EU pavilion

Chairperson: Elisabetta Carfagna – Full Professor of Statistics, University of Bologna

14:50 Michael Steiner – Senior Mathematical Statistician, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Appropriate Survey Methods for Different Country Profiles - Key Challenges, Gaps and Remaining Methodological Issues

15:10 Philippe Loudjani – Project Leader, Joint Research Centre
Use of new technologies for monitoring Common Agricultural Policy subsidies

15:30 Giuseppe Arbia – Full Professor of Economic Statistics, Cattolica University
Statistical modelling of agricultural data in a world of big data

15:50 Cristiano Ferraz – Associate Professor of Statistics, Federal University of Pernambuco and Fulvia Mecatti – Full Professor of Statistics, University of Milano Bicocca
Combining different sampling frames for agricultural statistics

16:10 Discussion

16:30– 17:00 Coffee break

Chairperson: Giampiero Genovese – Head of Unit Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy, Joint Research Centre

17:00 Monica Pratesi – Full Professor of Statistics, University of Pisa and Alessandra Petrucci – Associate Professor of Statistics, University of Firenze
Disaggregating agricultural statistics by small area models

17:20 Roberto Benedetti – Full Professor of Economic Statistics, University of Chieti-Pescara, Paolo Postiglione – University of Chieti-Pescara and Federica Piersimoni – Istat
More efficient and accurate methods for using remote sensing

17:40 Javier Gallego – Statistician, Joint Research Centre
Satellite images and crop area estimation: perspectives with new sensors

18:00 Emily Berg – Research Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, Wayne Fuller, Sarah Nusser, and Zhengyuan Zhu – Iowa State University
Advanced methods for agricultural and agro-environmental monitoring

18:20 – 18:50 – General discussion and concluding remarks

18:50 Closing – David Wilkinson, Commissioner General for EU participation to EXPO and Director of the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability