Proposal for a Council Decision on the continued application of remote sensing to agricultural statistics during the period 1994-98 (94/C 173/06) COM(94) 227 final - 94/0139(CNS)

(Submitted by the Commission on 7 June 1994)

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 43 thereof,

Having regard to the proposal from the Commission,

Having regard to the opinion of the European Parliament,

Whereas the pilot project on remote sensing applied to agricultural statistics adopted by Decision 88/503/EEC, which expired on 31 December 1993, covered the first part of a development programme planned to last for 10 years;

Whereas the project was launched, in particular, because of the need to improve agricultural statistic systems in the Community; whereas there continues to be a need for this, particularly in the context of the new common agricultural policy;

Whereas the pilot project has fully met its objectives, particularly with regard to the development and integration of certain advanced methods into the Community's agricultural information system;

Whereas some of the actions developed under the project have reached the operational stage according to schedule; whereas, therefore these measures should be separated from those actions which require further research;

Whereas the operational actions to be continued during the period 1994-98 concern the application of remote sensing to provide early estimates of acreages and yields at European or national level and to improve the statistical systems of the Member States;

Whereas the activities which require further development during the second phase of the 10-year programme initially planned are covered by the Fourth Framework Programme for research and development;

Whereas, however, close complementarity must be ensured between the operational actions and those still being developed under the 10-year programme on the application of remote sensing to agricultural statistics;

Whereas the operational actions should benefit from the technical and methodological improvements resulting from the development work; whereas they will induce new research;

Whereas the actions concerning the application of remote sensing to agricultural statistics are consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, since the responsibility for and implementation of the various actions is shared between the Member States and the Commission in accordance with criteria of efficiency and feasibility;

Whereas these actions help to improve the Community's production of statistics and the management and control of the common agricultural policy,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION:

Article 1

The Commission is hereby authorized to continue, for a period of five years starting on 1 January 1994, to apply remote sensing to agricultural statistics, particularly applications aiming:

- to provide estimates, before harvest, of acreages and potential production of the main crops at European or national level,

- to facilitate the use of remote sensing by interested Member States with a view to improving their agricultural statistics systems.

Article 2

The Commission shall be responsible for the execution of the measures and shall annually inform the Member States of the implementation methods and results obtained, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 3.

Article 3

1. Where the procedure laid down in this Article is to be followed, the chairman shall refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Agricultural Statistics, hereinafter referred to as the 'Committee`, either on his own initiative or at the request of the representative of a Member State.

2. The representative of the Commission shall submit to the Committee a draft of the measures to be taken. The Committee shall deliver its opinion on the draft, within a time limit which the chairman may lay down according to the urgency of the matter, if necessary by taking a vote.

3. The opinion shall be recorded in the minutes. In addition, each Member State shall have the right to ask to have its position recorded in the minutes.

4. The Commission shall take the utmost account of the opinion delivered by the Committee. It shall inform the Committee of the manner in which its opinion has been taken into account.

Article 4

The Commission shall submit to the European Parliament and to the Council, by 31 July 1998, a report on the implementation of these actions and, where necessary, proposals on the continued application of remote sensing to agricultural statistics.

Article 5

This Decision shall enter into force on the day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities.

ANNEX

The applications of remote sensing to agricultural statistics to be implemented or developed during 1994-98 are organized into the following groups:

OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES

- Activity A: regional inventories

- Activity B: European rapid estimates

ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

- Activity C: integrated system

- Activity D: monitoring and prediction of harvests outside the Community

- Activity E: application of new methods or sensors.

I. OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES

Activity A: regional inventories

At the end of the first phase of the pilot project, responsibility for the implementation of the regional inventories was mainly transferred to the Member States. This activity is currently carried out in the southern Member States and occasionally in the northern ones. The Member States are responsabile for its continued application, extension and financing.

However, it is desirable for technical assistance and its financing to be financed from the Community budget. This mainly comprises assistance for statistical techniques, stratification, certain pilot studies of limited scope and the improvement of software.

Activity B: European rapid estimates

This activity is the continuation of Action 4 of the first phase of the pilot project in its operational stage. The objective is no longer to develop a method but to apply it at Community level for the purposes of the common agricultural policy (CAP).

Since the results were satisfactory at the end of phase 1, only minor adjustments to the method are needed. However, the following developments could be considered:

- extending the method to the new Member States,

- improving the representativeness of the sites selected at Community level and for certain Member States,

- improving methods for monitoring trends in set-aside areas,

- introducing analysis of radar images with a view to achieving greater security and reliability over time.

II. ACTIVITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

Activity C: integrated system

This concerns the transition of Actions 2 and 3 of phase one to the operational stage, particularly their integration at the level of the Community and the Member States.

Activity C-1: transition of Action 2 to the operational stage. This involves the validation of the vegetation and surface temperature indices obtained at the end of the first phase. It also concerns a statistical model for selecting representative areas for the various crop types for targeted indices. Transition to the operational stage also involves improvements in the production chain in terms of lead time and data reliability.

Activity C-2: transition of the various components of Action 3 to the operational stage, an improved Eurostat Agromet model, an agrometeorological model for yield prediction and forecasting using the pollen method.

As in the case of Activity C-1, these different models must be validated and the processing chains made more reliable to meet the needs of the operational stage.

Activity C-3: advanced agricultural information system at Community level. This activity will involve crosschecking the information obtained from Activities C-2, C-3 and B. Activity B should be accurate for acreage but is likely to be less so for yields. Conversely, Activities C-2 and C-3 provide essential information regarding yields. Integration and checking of the results of several actions should help optimize the whole system.

Activity C-4: examining the possibility of applying Activity C-3 at regional or national level. However, the acreage component provided by Activity B currently exists only at Community level and the quality of the yield predictions suffers when the area studied is smaller. Activity C-4 is intended to overcome these difficulties in close collaboration with the Member States.

Activity D: monitoring and prediction of harvests outside the Community

The validation of Action 4 at Community level and the implementation of Actions 2 and 3 mean that it is now possible to envisage the monitoring and prediction of harvests outside the Community.

The purpose of Activity D is to develop a method by working on eastern Europe and possibly the Maghreb region. The countries in these two areas represent considerable export potential for the Community and sometimes also considerable import potential. In both cases, the Community is engaged in active cooperation policies.

In order to facilitate the implementation of this activity, the Commission will seek the necessary cooperation in connection with programmes having similar objectives, such as the Phare Mars programme. However, under this project the Commission's requirements will take priority.

Activity E: application of new methods or sensors

The first phase of the plan provided only for the use of the Landsat-TM, Spot and NOAA-AVHRR sensors (high-resolution or meteorological satellites) for the principal actions. The activities planned for the next five years will probably continue to be based on this type of sensor. However, information from other types of sensors, particularly radar, should be used wherever useful. Work carried out in this field to date shows that radar images can be used in the project. However, it remains necessary to test the feasibility and usefulness of this source of information on wider areas than those studied to date.

Data from the Meteosat satellite should also be integrated, so as to improve knowledge of certain agrometeorological parameters.

Lastly, in the context of Activity D, work already commenced in the field of processing and classification of data satellite images from the past 10 years should be continued. The volume of data concerned is very large and ways of computerizing the task should therefore be studied.