Target 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.

Continuing population and consumption growth is likely to increase the global demand for food in the next decades. The achievement of food security will require profound changes in the global food and agriculture system. At the same time, unsustainable agriculture expansion has created numerous environmental problems, such as soil erosion, water pollution as well as greenhouse gases emissions. This target aims to contribute to this goal by increasing the economic, social and environmental sustainability of agricultural practices, including through enhancing the resilience to climate change and extreme whether events.

EO methods can play an important role in increasing agricultural productivity as well as minimising the environmental impact of the agricultural sector. Some of the ways EO has proven successful to contribute to increase the sustainability of agricultural production include: (1) yield estimation, (2) vegetation vigour and drought stress monitoring, (3) assessment of crop phenological development, (4) crop acreage estimation and cropland mapping and (5) mapping of disturbances and land use/land cover (LULC) changes (Atzberger, 2014). EO datasets can also be used by countries to inform spatial land use planning and minimize the potential environmental impact of crop expansion through optimizing the allocation of lands (Laurence et al. 2014). In addition to crops, satellite remote sensing techniques can also be applied for rangeland monitoring and management (Ali et al. 2016). EO data and methods can be useful for assessing the future exposure to climate change as well as to extreme weather events, as explained in the 1.5.2 indicator factsheet.

(eo services focus on Agricultural productivity & env. impact of agriculture. Indicator 2.4.1: Sustainable agriculture)