[The ]second international workshop on crop monitoring and forecasting in South America

The increasing importance of South American agriculture in the international market has emphasised the need for accurate and timely information about crop development and production. In recent decades the use of remote sensing and agrometeorological data in crop monitoring systems has become the subject of studies for government and research institutions in the region. In November 2002, at the Centro de Relevamiento y Evaluación de Recursos Agrícolas y Naturales (CREAN) of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, South American experts and representatives of JRC and FAO held the first meeting entitled Workshop on Crop Monitoring and Forecasting - Tools for Early Warning in Food Security, to discuss crop monitoring systems as well as to develop the basis for a cooperation network to facilitate the exchange of data and methodologies. Proposals for joint projects and cooperation came out as a result of that workshop. From 2005, JRC has implemented regular bulletins of crop monitoring in the region, more specifically covering the Mercosur + Bolivia, and has reestablished contacts with local institutions in order to restore the cooperation and the formation of the South America Scientific Network on Crop Monitoring and Forecasting. The South America scientific network, between JRC and local institutions, is a key part of the activities of 'Crop monitoring for food security in South America'. The cooperation aims to better calibrate the data used for bulletin generation as well as data exchange to improve local activities in crop monitoring. As a result of previous contacts (Mission in September 2005), a network with nine institutions was created and JRC/IPSC/Agrifish/MARS-FOOD made available meteo/remote sensing data to be used during the last summer cropping season. In this context, the promotion of workshops was seen as a strategy for improving the network activities and cooperation between JRC and the groups involved. The main goal of the Second International Workshop on Crop Monitoring and Forecasting in South America was to gather the institutions and groups participating in the scientific network to show past and recent activities on crop monitoring, as well as results and data comparison. This workshop also aimed at discussing actual possibilities for future cooperation involving local groups participating in scientific exchange programmes and joint projects for methodological development and improvement of crop monitoring information systems for the region. This publication contains the papers presented during the workshop.