About the Community of Practice

To build an effective Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) for Agriculture, GEO will need to engage those currently involved in agricultural monitoring to help design and implement the system that is needed, building on what is currently in place. This Community of Practice is comprised of the stakeholders interested in a GEOSS Agriculture Monitoring System and includes producers and/or users of raw or thematic spatial information linked to crop location, crop areas or crop growth conditions. Their common interest resides in the timely and sustained availability, of low cost/ free access, data and products which adhere to predefined standard and validation procedures.

In addition to the space agencies (e.g. NASA, ESA, ISRO, CRESDA, CNES), international organisations (e.g. UN FAO, WFP, WB, USAID, EU, CGIAR) and the national / regional administrations concerned with agricultural monitoring, the community of practice will need to include representatives of different information user groups linked to different economic sectors and acting at different levels of society (e.g. NGO's, farmer's organizations and cooperatives, agro-industries and service providers). The main economic sectors relate to trade and market analysis, crop insurance and evaluation, development aid, policy making, rural development but also agricultural production and management at field / local level.

The primary task for the community of practice is to identify priorities for improving global agricultural monitoring and work with GEO and the member organizations to effect those improvements. The Community of Practice will need to meet periodically to assess priorities and to develop strategies and approaches for realizing the system of systems. A number of short term tasks will be identified and will be undertaken in concert with the GEO Working Groups.