Abstract :
[en] Global Monitoring for Food Security (GMFS) is a Global Monitoring for Environment and Security
(GMES) Service Element (GSE) project, part of the European Space Agency (ESA) contribution to the European Union (EU) /ESA GMES Programme. GMFS aims to establish an operational service for crop monitoring in support of Food Security Monitoring to serve policy makers and operational users.
The GMFS project started in March 2003 as part of Stage 1 of the ESA Earthwatch GMES services Element “Service Consolidation Actions”, and was continued in October 2005 as part of the Stage 2 of the ESA Earth watch GMES services Element – “Scaling Up Consolidated GMES Services”. In this document an overview is given of the work done throughout the previous six years. GMFS aimed at monitoring crop state /vegetation condition at continental and national scale. Low resolution Earth Observation (EO) data was used for monitoring purposes at continental scale, while at national scale products were based upon medium and high resolution data, field work and agro-meteorological models. The project was guided by a project strategy group with members from the United States Agency for International Development - Famine Early Warning System Network (USAID-FEWSNET), Directorate General for Development (DG-DEV), Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research - International Wheat Improvement Center (CGIAR-CIMMYT), European Commission Joint Research Center (EC-JRC), United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The goal of the project in Stage 1 (March 2003 –November 2004) was to consolidate an early warning system for food security. This started off by an intensive literature review and setting up an initial service for the Centre de Suivi Ecologique (CSE) in Dakar Senegal. In the second Phase of Stage 1 activities focussed more on the actual service delivery and setting up activities with users. Those activities included the monitoring agricultural production for Senegal, monitoring agriculture in Malawi and giving support to the Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission (CFSAM) of FAO /WFP. Additionally, services were set up for the centre Agro-Hydro-Météorologique (AGRHYMET) as a result of a meeting between AGHRYMET and Vlaamse Instelling voor Technologisch Onderzoek (VITO).
During 2005 the early warning service was continued to support GMFS users although there was
at that time no formal contract to do so. At the start of the Second Stage, in October 2005, a GMFS user executive board, consisting of one representative from: EC-JRC, FAO, WFP, Southern Africa Development Community Regional Remote Sensing Unit (SADC-RRSU), Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and AGRHYMET, was set up to support the consortium in defining the correct services and to review the work. Since the focus for the Second Stage was on up scaling the consolidated services, it was decided that the early warning service and support to the CFSAM were to be continued, the agricultural mapping service was to be expanded to more countries - namely, Senegal, Sudan, Ethiopia, Malawi and Zimbabwe - and extra services on yield modeling using remote sensing and agro-meteorological models were to be provided. During the second year of this stage, the services were even more extended with, support to the Ministry of Agriculture and Meteorological Department in Mozambique, extra activities in Ethiopia and Sudan and support to
the regional centers on operational use of the ESA Data Dissemination System (DDS).
