Global food security represents a major societal challenge for the coming decades. Growing human population, increased demand for water and energy, and a changing climate have contributed to expanded concerns centered on food supply, production, resiliency, and price volatility. The global food system involves production and distribution with multiple stages in supply chains. Food security is inherently an issue involving natural aspects as well as social, economic, and political dimensions. There are opportunities to link environmental observations with social and economic data to generate information and provide insights to improve assessments of food security challenges and enhance agricultural practices. Earth observations and Earth science data, models, and knowledge provide essential information and tools to support the functioning and resilience of food systems. For example, Earth observations have proven helpful with estimations of crop area and cropping intensities, agricultural productivity assessments, water planning and irrigation management, and crop yield modeling on a range of time scales. New research continues to expand the areas in which Earth observation informs food security effort. This session explores how products enabled by Earth observations can help transform food security—especially when observations are combined with information on the broader food system. We further examine how uses of remote sensing and geospatial data can enhance organizations' planning and operations as well as support broader food security assessments, commodity pricing, risk assessments, and policy analysis. We invite submissions on (i) research advancing capabilities to apply Earth observation data within models and software tools to inform agricultural decision-making; (ii) research combining data, models, and methods derived from both social science and physical science to respond to food security challenges; and (iii) examples of programmatic and technical approaches to build capacity within the food security and agricultural community to harness Earth observations to inform decision-making.

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