Tanaka Tetsuji, Sun Laixiang, Becker-Reshef Inbal, Song Xiao-Peng, Puricelli Estefania
Department of Economics, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA.
Commun Earth Environ. 2023;4(1):334. doi: 10.1038/s43247-023-00992-2. Epub 2023 Sep 21.
Global food security is increasingly threatened by climate change and regional human conflicts. Abnormal fluctuations in crop production in major exporting countries can cause volatility in food prices and household consumption in importing countries. Here we show that timely forecasting of crop harvest from satellite data over major exporting regions can trigger production response in the opposite hemisphere to offset the short-term fluctuations and stabilize global food supply. Satellite forecasting can reduce the fluctuation extents of country-level prices by 1.1 to 12.5 percentage points for anticipated wheat shortage or surplus in Russia and Ukraine, and even reverse the price shock in importing countries for anticipated soybean shortage in Brazil. Our research demonstrates that by leveraging the seasonal lags in crop calendars between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, operational crop monitoring from satellite data can provide a mechanism to improve global food security.
全球粮食安全日益受到气候变化和地区性人类冲突的威胁。主要出口国作物产量的异常波动会导致进口国粮食价格和家庭消费的波动。我们在此表明，通过卫星数据及时预测主要出口地区的作物收成，可以促使另一半球做出生产响应，以抵消短期波动并稳定全球粮食供应。对于俄罗斯和乌克兰预期的小麦短缺或过剩情况，卫星预测可将国家层面价格的波动幅度降低1.1至12.5个百分点，对于巴西预期的大豆短缺情况，甚至可以扭转进口国的价格冲击。我们的研究表明，利用南北半球作物生长周期的季节性滞后，基于卫星数据的作物监测业务可为改善全球粮食安全提供一种机制。
