The GEO acknowledges sustainable agriculture as one of the critical societal benefit areas (SBA) for international cooperation and collaboration. The agriculture SBA calls for an operational system for monitoring global agriculture that includes the following three main functional components: • Global mapping and monitoring of changes in distribution of cropland area and the associated cropping systems • Global monitoring of agricultural production leading to accurate and timely reporting of national agricultural statistics and accurate forecasting of shortfalls in crop production and food supply and facilitating reduction of risk and increased productivity at a range of scales; and, • Effective early warning of famine, enabling the timely mobilization of an international response in food aid. The agricultural component of GEOSS is aimed at improving food security through increased use of earth observation data. Emphasis is on the creation and sustained provision of basic earth observation data, enhancements (data products and predictive models) of the observations to improve agricultural monitoring, and the development of the capacity and infrastructure necessary to make available and utilize earth observation information, especially within the developing world. The Agricultural Monitoring Task Ag 0703 is co chaired by Chris Justice UMD, Olivier LEO EC Italy and Wu Bingfang IRSA China.