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TA3.HLO1 - To develop multidisciplinary analyses and indicators of past trends and present state of natural resources use in Europe and its global interdependencies

TA3.HLO2 - To develop scenarios describing the efficient use of natural resources in the global transition towards a green and low carbon economy

TA3.HLO3 - To develop information infrastructures and systems (INSPIRE, SEIS, GEOSS, GMES) necessary to share environmental observations, information and analytical models and outcomes and promote interoperability and standard setting as foreseen in the Digital Agenda for Europe and 'Integrated Industrial Policy for the Globalisation Era'.

TA3.HLO4 - Serve the EU's internal and external policies by monitoring environmental situations and conditions, building capacity, encouraging good governance and underpinning EU goals for global environmental stewardship

The rationale behind the crop forecasts at EU level is the need to provide timely information, during the growing season on the instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to enable rapid and accurate decision-making. In fact, key production statistics are typically provided by Member States to Eurostat and DG AGRI with a time lag, i.e. several months after harvest. This delay affects decision making in planning tools related to the CAP, as the all-important integrated European perspective is missing. The sooner information on crop production and harvest is available, the better.
With the AGRI4CAST Action, CAP decision makers in DG AGRI are provided with timely, independent crop yield forecasts at European and Member State level. The results of the AGRI4CAST Action are used by DG AGRI and DG ESTAT analysts to prepare food balance sheet estimates, and are thus used for market analyses and decisions related to the CAP management of stocks, import/export, market and intervention, and budget preparation.
Furthermore, results of AGRI4CAST will be used as input by DG AGRI to deliver relevant information to the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a European contribution in response to the 2011 G-20 initiative on market transparency.
In view of providing support to the CAP and the Climate Change policy agenda of the EC, studies that assess the resilience of crop production systems under a number of climate change scenarios are being implemented. Agriculture has a dual role in terms of global change: It is an important emitter of greenhouse gases, while at the same time it is one of the main sectors to be impacted by climatic change, with local, regional and global implications for the stability and access of food supply.
The AGRI4CAST crop monitoring activities are performed under EU law with regard to their maintenance, operation and analysis. The latest regulation (Council Regulation (EC) No 78/2008) was adopted on January 2008 for the period 2008 - 2013 to cover the operational activities directly financed by DG AGRI for a period of 6 years. This regulation acknowledges the effectiveness of the crop yield forecasts over and above the information provided by traditional agricultural statistics and other forecasting systems. AGRI4CAST guarantees the scientific relevance, independence and timeliness of its data products.

The Action focuses on the Monitoring Agricultural Resources Unit (MARS) Crop Yield Forecasting System (MCYFS), which aims to provide accurate and timely crop yield forecasts and crop production estimates, including biofuel crops, for the EU territory and other strategic areas of the world (see JRC Action FOODSEC). The system monitors crop vegetation growth (cereal, oil seed crops, protein crops, sugar beet, potatoes, pastures, rice), including the short-term effects of meteorological events on crop production, and provides seasonal yield forecasts of key European crops, thereby contributing to the evaluation of global production estimates (wheat, rice, etc.) in support of CAP management decisions.
The MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System is a complex, integrated analysis tool comprising remote sensing and meteorological observations, agro-meteorological and bio-physical modelling as well as statistical analyses. The latter two components receive key input from the MARS meteorological and remote sensing infrastructures. The information and system output is made available throughout the JRC and is regularly used by a number of scientific Actions (e.g. WQM, DESERT, SOIL, AGRI-ENV).
While the crop yield forecasts for Europe are produced on a regular basis, other main producing areas of the world receive increasing attention, as global commodity markets increasingly influence the Common Agricultural Policy. In accordance, the Action will further enhance the MCYFS by extending its simulation capacities to methodologies appropriate for the global scale and by a stepwise extension of crop yield forecasts towards key regional production areas in the world.
In order to enlarge the Action's capacity to simulate impacts of climate change to agriculture and to evaluate adaptation strategies, the Bio-physical Model Applications Framework (BioMA) is being developed and further enhanced within AGRI4CAST. A suite of model components implemented in the modelling framework enable simulations of various crops in agricultural systems under present and future climate, forced by chosen climate change scenarios, and concentrating on short-term and medium-term time horizons (e.g. 2020, 2050). Facilitated through the component-based approach, modelling activities of the Action are being integrated with other bio-physical and economic models of the JRC in order to allow for an integrated approach to the evaluation of climate change scenarios. This work contributes to the JRC's Task Force on Integrated Modelling.
AGRI4CAST is strongly linked with the FOODSEC Action. The two Actions share a common global information infrastructure, with an outsourced near-real-time acquisition and pre-processing of remote sensing and meteorological data. The two Actions strongly coordinate their activities to potentially cover the entire world. Both Actions are involved in the intergovernmental Group of Earth Observation (GEO) through contributions to its multi-annual work plan task on Global Agriculture Monitoring.

International Activities with a European Dimension:
The Action maintains a network of European Crop Growth Modelling System (CGMS) users within competent national authorities and research institutions, including biennial CGMS User Workshops. Furthermore, AGRI4CAST pursues scientific collaboration through a Collaboration Agreement with the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA) in Morocco and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Leonid Pogorilyy Scientific Research Institute in the Ukraine, and collaborates with other European research institutions in the field of agro-meteorology and crop modelling such as the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA) in France and the University of Milan, Italy.

International Activities Outside Europe:
AGRI4CAST contributes to the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) work programme on Agriculture, holds Collaboration Agreements and Memoranda of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) in Argentina, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines (in process), and collaborates through indirect actions with research partners in Brazil and Argentina as well as in China. The Action collaborates with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on crop area statistics and a Global Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), thus contributing to the G-20 initiative towards more transparent markets.