Global Land and Agricultural Monitoring (GLAM)

In June 2011, agricultural ministers from the world’s leading economies agreed to the G-20 “Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture,” which launched the Global Agricultural Geo-Monitoring Initiative, to improve global monitoring of agricultural production and food security using Earth observation, led by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).

This GEO-GLAM initiative will build on the current GEO Agricultural Monitoring Task, providing enhancements and transparency to global production monitoring and food security systems, strengthening existing national capacities to use Earth observation data and building new capabilities where there are gaps.

Website: http://www.earthobservations.org/cop_ag_gams.shtml

Participating programmes:

• The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)
• MARS FOODSEC, part of EC Monitoring Agricultural ResourceS
• USAID FEWS NET