In the rapidly evolving landscape of agricultural technology, the capacity to accurately map and monitor crop types and manage soil, land and water resources sustainably has emerged as a cornerstone for enhancing productivity, sustainability, and better productivity for food security. In this context, FAO launched the initiative for Soil-Land-Water Digital Integrated Information System (SoLaWISe) during the FAO Science and Innovation Forum 2022. By employing integrated approaches, enhancing technical capacities and information accessibility, facilitating targeted decision-making with the latest Soil, Land, and Water digital information, it advocates for sustainable management practices, while also furnishing essential crop-level information crucial for the creation and execution of agricultural solutions. By providing an improved technical framework for efficiently mapping crops and related agricultural information, SoLaWISe supports directly or indirectly various national and international projects and activities such as Soil mapping for resilient agrifood systems (SOILFER), Emergency seed support to sustain food security and the livelihoods of conflict-affected smallholder farmers in Ukraine, Emergency food security project in Afghanistan among various others. 

In this context the webinar intitled “Adaptive and innovative tools and approaches for crop mapping” was launched on 17th April 2024. The webinar facilitated knowledge exchange around crop mapping and promote technical collaboration among experts working on the topic through different initiatives, inside and outside FAO. It will illustrate strategies and cutting-edge tools for effective mapping and monitoring of crop types using different applications reflecting diversity of approaches in different contexts.  

Specifically, in addition to internal FAO speakers, four speakers were involved from Mozambique, Australia, Italy, and India bringing specific cases from the different Countries. More than 320 people from 65 different Countries attended the meeting, showing a strong interest and requesting follow-up presentations.  

Participants’ feedback will be gathered to design a series of webinars that will target different types of users: technical experts interested in discussing the latest RS analysis advancements, as well as practitioners and decision makers interested in learning about applications examples at field, national and global level. These webinars contributed to the development of a catalog of resources for guiding in the selection of the crop mapping tools and approaches that best fit users‘ needs.