In a global context crop assessment has two rather contrasting but equally important roles. On the one hand, the identification of drought and the potential shortages likely to occur in developing countries as a result are central to government and international response programmes and relief efforts; on the other hand burgeoning subsidies in industrial agriculture have necessitated the development of sophisticated techniques to maximise the effectiveness of these subsidies in controlling production. A third, related component of crop assessment has recently begun to emerge in the form of individual crop forecasting, for example for sugar beet and potato, allowing a complex market for such crops to develop.
While it is farmers that strive for profitable, efficient and sustainable production from renewable resources (crops in particular but also livestock, timber and forage), it is increasingly the decision makers and planners who have to address and respond to issues of over- and/or under-production, imports, exports and quotas, conservation and protection, food security, subsidy allocation and administration. Explicit within this mandate is federal production levels, in particular crop assessment including areas under production, yields, predictions/forecasts, changing land use and land ownership, changing management and technical inputs, farming systems and actual crops planted and harvested.
When adequate information on these component parts of the agricultural system are available or can be collected, political and economic concerns can be addressed through improved management programmes to ensure both the sustainable utilisation of the available resources for food and of appropriate high level decisions regarding food movements, pricing and imports/exports. The premier way of acquiring this data in a cost-effective and synoptic way is through the use of rigorous remote sensing methodologies.