Which are the climate change impacts on agriculture at global level? How can satellite Earth observations help in this contest? Dr. Hideki Kanamaru from FAO explained some of these issues at the workshop prof. Fabio Del Frate organized on April, 4 at the School of Engineering at the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been actively working to contribute to national policy planning on climate change, agriculture, and food security – Dr. Kanamaru underlined -. We need to understand better how climate change will affect agriculture and food security. Without that information, countries cannot plan climate change adaptation strategically.

How this can be achieved? Students and researchers took part at the discussion keeping more and more interesting the event.

There are three pillars in climate smart agriculture: increase, in a sustainable manner, productivity and income growth in agriculture; support adaptation across the agricultural sectors to expected climatic changes and build resilience; reduce, where possible, the greenhouse gas emissions of production systems.

For these purposes future approaches would be focused on the use of remote sensing in addressing climate change impact assessments (Filling spatial gaps in observation; investigating on difficult-to-measure variables such as soil moisture or vegetation amounts and types)

The use of remote sensing data is basic for analysis of historical trend; monitoring of current condition; early warning of developing condition (e.g. drought, pests and diseases); nowcasting of rapidly developing extreme events (e.g. flooding, landslide); forecasting (today, tomorrow, 3-days, week, month, season, decades).

The presentation provided an overview of the global issue with a focus on impacts of climate variability on the agriculture sectors and adaptation planning in developing countries. Ideas for enhancing the use of innovative technologies and of datasets from remote sensing and other sources to fill the information gap in the most vulnerable parts of the world should be solicited.

Everywhere and every time!