Welcome to the Monitoring Agricultural Resources Unit!
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Focusing on crop production, agricultural activities and rural development, the MARS Unit provides timely forecasts, early assessments and the scientific underpinning for efficient policy implementation, including monitoring and control systems. The work serves the Agriculture and Food policies of the European Union and their impact on the rural environment, encompassing the global issues of food security and climate change.
Our activities are based on expertise in crop modelling, agro- meteorology, sampling methods, environmental geo-spatial analysis, econometrics and using European and global data infrastructures. From this skill-set we generate evidence-based information and forecasts for the management of agricultural practices and early warnings on Food Security. We foster the development of control systems, such as land parcel management and remote sensing checks, for efficient implementation of the Common Agriculture Policy, including the 'greening' aspects. We perform assessments of the effectiveness, efficiency, relevance and sustainability of policy measures according to their impacts on rural environment and on food security. This includes the issue of climate change adaptation and possible mitigation by agriculturally related policies, and specific attention to new measures promoting biodiversity, environmental quality and resource efficiency
The work of the Unit is carried out in four Research Actions:
Action 21102 - GeoCAP addresses new information needs for European Policies related to Agriculture and Regional Development, such as Cross Compliance, Farm Advisory System, food quality and product origin traceability. Furthermore, the Action supports future reforms by the definition, development and testing of standardized and sustainable control methods in a variety of agriculture-related areas. The Action also follows future development in Geomatics techniques, and defines common specifications, standard measurement and data management tools, and validated methods to reinforce the consistency of land parcel identification and measurement across the Union and in Candidate Countries.
Action 21103 – Agri4Cast is centred on the JRC's crop yield forecasting system aiming at providing accurate and timely crop yield forecasts and crop production biomass for the union territory and other strategic areas of the world. The System contributes to the evaluation of global productions in support to CAP management decision. In view of providing support to a reviewed CAP for the next 10 years and the Climate Change policy agenda of the EC, studies on changing production scenarios based on climate change impact on agriculture are implemented.
Action 21107 - AGRI-ENV (Integration of Environment Concerns into Agriculture) supports the impact assessment of the Common Agricultural Policy and Rural Development Policy on the European environment with a focus on spatial aspects (i.e. provision of geographical datasets, geo-spatial modelling and analyses, maps and indicators).
Action 42002 - FoodSec has developed a system for regional monitoring and forecasting in various parts of the world. During an initial phase (2001 - 2004), the following four pilot areas were covered: Russia and the New Independent States, the Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa and South America (MERCOSUR countries plus Bolivia). Since 2005 the system has been extended to food insecure areas worldwide.
Contact Info:
Unit Head:
Neil HUBBARD - Tel.: +39-0332-78 5725 E-mail: neil.hubbard(at)ec.europa.eu
Secretary:
Marie Clément - Tel. +39-0332-78 5471 E-mail: jrc-mars-secr(at)ec.europa.eu
