Over fifty experts gathered at the Expert Meeting on Crop Monitoring for Improved Food Security in February 2014 at Vientiane, Lao PDR to deliberate on best practices and methodological issues, and to identify challenges for future research.

Estimates and forecasts of crop area and yield are of critical importance to policy makers for the planning of agricultural production and monitoring of food supply. The possible links between poverty and crop yields, which depend upon a variety of factors such as cultivation practices, availability of irrigation, access to resources to buy agricultural inputs for adoption of new technology, cannot be fully understood without reliable estimates of crop area and yields. In the absence of reliable information on crop productivity the reasons behind food insecurity of agricultural households cannot be precisely identified.

The Expert Meeting on Crop Monitoring for Improved Food Security, organized as a side event of the 25th Session of the Asia and Pacific Commission on Agricultural Statistics (APCAS) held in Vientiane, Lao PDR, provided an occasion for over 50 experts from Asia and other regions to deliberate on best practices and methodological issues, and to identify challenges for future research work.

This publication copublished by ADB with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations summarizes the outcomes of the deliberations in the meeting and puts together a series of technical papers presented in the meeting and some reference papers.