US scientists develop advanced modelling tool to improve food security

Scientists from the USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) have developed an advanced modelling tool to help optimise crop production across larger areas.

The new tool, known as the Geospatial Agricultural Management and Crop Assessment Framework (GAMCAF), brings together crop models that estimate plant growth and crop yield at scales as fine as 30m.

It also uses spatial sources of information on soils, water, land use, and other factors.

Unlike conventional tools, the new tool is designed to work automatically with spatial data, which makes it possible to make much larger predictions of yields across the entire regional scale, according to Jonathan Resop, who led the platform’s development as a USDA-ARS postdoc.

Resop said that the real power of the framework is that it lets them look at different scenarios of land use change, water, and climate change.

The research has been driven by mounting concerns about food security across the Eastern Seaboard Region (ESR).

The scientists used GAMCAF in order to predict potato crop production in the ESR, and found that increasing irrigation could result in substantial yield increases.

The scientists have now added a corn crop model and are integrating a wheat model, and plan to add many more.

The platform currently includes climate data, enabling predictions of how future temperature and precipitation scenarios will impact crop production.

It can also examine the effects of land use changes such as farmland loss or, conversely, of bringing abandoned farmland in places like Maine back into production.

In the future, it might even be used to make similar forecasts for other US regions or the entire country, according to the scientists.

The research is part of a much larger initiative known as ‘Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast with Regional Food Systems’ (EFSNE), led by Penn State University.

Funded by USDA-National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), EFSNE is evaluating the benefits that increased regional food production may hold both for consumers – especially in disadvantaged neighbourhoods – and for local farmers, retailers, distributors, and others in the food supply chain.

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Image: The scientists used the new tool to predict potato crop production in the Eastern Seaboard Region. Photo courtesy of Michael & Christa Richert.