This article is the first in a series on FEWS NET, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s famine early warning system network.

Where the Volga River flows into the Caspian Sea, it creates an extensive delta. The Volga Delta is comprised of more than 500 channels, and sustains the most productive fishing grounds in Eurasia.

Washington -- Since 1985, when scientists first used satellites to produce continental-scale images of vegetation and crops across Africa, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded an effort that warns nations and regions months in advance of serious impending food shortages.

USAID established the famine early warning system (FEWS) to help prevent or respond to famine conditions in sub-Saharan Africa by giving decision makers specific information about drought conditions or dwindling crop yields based on satellite remote-sensing data.

Satellite sensors acquire images of the Earth and transmit the data to ground receiving stations worldwide. Once the raw images are processed, analysts can document changing environmental conditions like pollution, global climate change, natural resource distribution and urban growth.

In this effort, USAID partners with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the United States, and collaborates with international, regional and national partners. Chemonics International, a global development firm, implements the program for USAID.

In 2000, the FEWS Network (FEWS NET) was formed to establish more effective, sustainable, African-led food security and partnerships to reduce the vulnerability of at-risk groups to famine and floods.

“At the beginning, it was primarily remote sensing,” Gary Eilerts, USAID program manager for FEWS NET, told America.gov. “It was pretty much looking at rainfall and vegetation and trying to say what we thought was happening in terms of food security.”

IMAGERY AND MARKETS

Today, he said, the program has 23 offices around the world where analysts combine maps, data and imagery with knowledge of local markets and trade in each country, and information about local livelihoods, to determine what food the market can buy locally, what it can bring in and what people can afford.

“Food security is a very complex phenomenon,” geographer Molly Brown, who works for the Biospherics Sciences Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told America.gov. “Just because you have green stuff on the ground doesn’t mean you’re producing anything in the way of food.”

USAID spent $14.9 million on FEWS NET activities in 2007, funding operations in 17 African nations; regional offices in Burkina Faso, Kenya and South Africa; and country offices in Afghanistan, Haiti and Guatemala.

In the field offices, analysts study satellite imagery, local livelihoods, food security and vulnerability, markets and trade, early warning systems and agricultural economics. They also plan contingencies for and responses to food issues.

The USGS employs regional scientists for Central America, East Africa, West Africa and Southern Africa who support FEWS NET activities and strengthen the technical capacity of regional and national institutions.

FEWS NET gets its warnings out through a mix of products that are printed and posted online, Charles Chopak, Chemonics’s chief of party for FEWS NET activities, told America.gov.

These include monthly food-security updates for the 23 countries and three regional offices that are targeted to technical readers in ministries of agriculture, finance and social welfare. Regular food-security outlooks -- maps updated semi-annually -- show projected food insecurity for a country.

“When a situation is emerging or evolving,” Chopak said, “we put out a one-page food-security alert that describes what’s causing the issue and what the impact will be on food security.”

In a typical year, FEWS NET analysts might be able to give warnings five months to six months in advance of a food problem. In a bad year, they might be able to give a one- to two-month warning.

Anyone can sign up for e-mail alerts on the FEWS NET Web site. Audiences for the warnings include local governments, U.N. agencies in FEWS NET countries, USAID missions and embassies, local and international nongovernmental organizations and food-security consultants.

FOOD CRISIS

The average price of rice worldwide has more than tripled since early 2006 and wheat, corn and soybean prices have more than doubled, triggering food riots and threatening to plunge more than 100 million people into deeper hunger and poverty. The causes of the crisis vary, but the result in many places is famine. (See “Multiple Factors Drive Up Global Food Prices.”)

The evolving and increasingly advanced work of FEWS NET becomes even more critical during such a crisis, Eilerts said.

“I spend about 80 percent of my time now dealing with that crisis,” he added. “It’s much more important to know what [food] is [available in countries] and what is not. And it’s much more important to be able to follow the changes over time because this problem will be with us for several more years, if not 10 more years.”

“We’re developing a series of products specifically to respond to people at various [technical] levels who want to monitor and take action on rising prices,” Chopak said.

One product will compare the main staple food of the poor in each country with a likely substitute and try to understand the relative price changes of each. Another product will examine a series of price changes in a region and explain the food-security effect of the change.

FEWS NET is adding to its monthly reports in each country an urban assessment and vulnerability section that discusses food-security issues in urban areas, which may be more vulnerable to food shortages than agricultural areas.

More information about FEWS NET is available at the USAID Web site.

For more about remote sensing systems, see. "U.S. Agencies Moving Forward in Planning Landsat 7 Successor."