## 4 Earth Observation Products and Dissemination Platforms
On the other hand, farmers need information on crop anomalies or stress, early detection of pests and diseases, and advisory information to support irrigation scheduling, fertilizer application and stocking rates. Addressing such varying needs requires the harmonized use of multi-sensor data to take advantage of both high temporal and spatial resolutions [74; 79]. SANSA Earth Observation Directorate takes advantage of a plethora of data available such as MODIS, Landsat, CBERS, SPOT and Sentinel to provide various agricultural monitoring products at different scales to advance food security imperatives of the country (Figure 5). SANSA focuses on the provision of multi-stakeholder relevant agricultural information in a form of maps and crop statistics informed by users' needs and within the framework of various international collaborative projects. These the include CropWatch for South Africa (CW4 SA) project, in partnership with Airbus Space and Defence, funded by International Partnerships in Space Program (IPSP),administered by the UK Space Agency and Enhancing Food Security in African AgriCultural Systems with the support of Remote Sensing (AfriCulttuReS), funded by European Commission Horizon 2020 (774652). In addition, satellite-derived biophysical parameters such as leaf area index (LAI), Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), leaf chlorophyll and water content and several vegetation indices are regularly produced to monitor crop condition in both irrigated and dryland production systems in South Africa. However, most agricultural production systems in the rest of Africa are characterized by smallholder (i.e., with area \(<\) 0.5 ha), dryland farming; thus, they require very detailed information, attainable through very high-resolution data such as Worldview-3. Therefore, concerted efforts to make high-resolution data available to various African countries are needed, and this is achievable through coordination by regional organizations such as AfriGEO, the African Space Agency and the African Union. Critically, timeliness of information provision are often affected by manual image processing chains involving human intervention; additionally, farmers' ability to interpret the information hinders the utility of the EO-based products for optimizing farm-level decisions. Therefore, agricultural information dissemination platforms, particularly, need to operate in a timely fashion with respect to rapidly detecting adverse conditions that may affect productivity [80]. In addition, capacity building should be tailored to and targeted at farmers (who are often ignored) to increase awareness about and develop the capability to use EO-based information in order to improve productivity and cope with agricultural risks, relevant for achieving AU-Agenda 2063 goal 5 (i.e., Modern Agriculture for increased productivity and production). Figure 4: _Cont._  
Figure 4: Examples of EO-based food security and agricultural monitoring information products provided by various operating systems. (**a**) Vegetation condition index (VCI) indicating current vegetation health compared to long-term historical average based on METOP-AVHRR data; (**b**) Crop condition map showing poor to exceptional conditions per major crop at continental scale provided by GEGLAM’s Crop Monitor for Early Warning bulletins based on remotely sensed data, ground observations and field reports; (**c**) Agro-climatic indicators (NDVI, Minimum Temperature, Maximum Temperature, Cumulative Precipitation, Evaporative Stress Index, Soil Moisture, Daily Precipitation, and Growing Degree days) overproduction areas in Free State South Africa provided by GEOGLAM’s Crop Monitor for AMIS bulletins; (**d**) eMODIS temporally smoothed NDVI provided by FEWS NET system every 10 days; (**e**) Crop warning matrix based on NDVI and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) provided by ASAP system. Figure 5: EO-based agricultural monitoring products developed at SANSA-based Landsat 8 OLI for national planted area monitoring.