Analyze Food Security with GIS

1. Food Availability in Local Environments
   • Providing geospatial analysis of local areas’ food availability can provide insights on food deserts for better planning. That includes monitoring cover changes and local environments to help envision potential threats over time.
2. Climate Effects on Agriculture and Resources
   • GIS can be leveraged on a larger scale to track climate change and provide in-depth data. That includes monitoring rainfall and soil fertility to understand areas that could lead to food shortages and data analysis of quantitative values of rainfall, satellite imagery analysis and time analysis to track changes. With GIS technologies and the strategic insight it provides, there can be large-scale planning and large-scale change.
3. Food production planning, development and management
   • GIS is an important tool in the efforts to better understand and manage our relationship between the availability of food, the agricultural lands where it grows and the effects climate change has on agricultural production. With GIS technologies, the understanding of these relationships can lead to improving sustainable practices and better planning against the threats of food insecurity. With informed strategies for existing farmlands and evolving production practices, we can ensure food security worldwide.

Northern Ghana experiences annual flooding that impacts local farmers and devastates the community. But GIS is helping to combat the severe effects flooding has on food security in the region.

Through a variety of mapped features, such as physical, administrative, environmental, cultural, socio-economic and territorial factors, communities can be a part of the discussions regarding food security.

Image from Mofa Food Security

The result is a 3D map that provides communities an opportunity to plan for development around perennial flooding issues and long drought periods that follow.

GIS models such as this are essential to regions like Northern Ghana to successfully work toward sustainable development.

The Global Information and Early Warning System (or GIEWS) has worldwide remote sensing data that can monitor major food crop conditions and assess the future of food production. The technology can provide map data around water availability and vegetation health and offer essential insights in the process.

Image from Food and Agriculture Organization

Agricultural areas likely to be affected by dry spells or droughts can be identified with the Agricultural Stress Index (ASI), thanks to the following:

• Rainfall estimates
• Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
• GIEWS
• FAO’s CBC division

Geospatial technologies and insights are changing the landscape of predictive models and the monitoring and strategic management of food security for all of humanity.

We hope you found this educational and beneficial for you and your organization. If you have any further questions about GIS and food security or need any other ArcGIS support, feel free to start a conversation with our team of industry experts today!