Building a Rice Decision Support System to Support Global Food Security and Commodity Markets

Rice is an important crop globally that influences food security and the Earth system. Rice is the predominant food staple in many regions with approximately 700 million tons of production annually across the globe. Rice is sensitive to a variety of drivers that can adversely impact production and efficiency including weather variability and inter-seasonal volatility, water resources, and risk management decisions (e.g., pests). Futures are a tool used to manage or hedge risk, reduce volatility, improve food security, and maximize efficiency and profit on the open market. Currently, the rice futures market has little high quality and timely information available to make strategic or application specific decisions to reduce risk and maximize profit. The global rice futures market is thinly traded causing extreme price fluctuation orders of magnitude. This innovation gap has created an opportunity to build an operational Rice Decision Support System to support the rice futures market. The overarching goal of this NASA Phase I SBIR is to evaluate the feasibility of a Rice Decision Support System (RiceDSS) to Support Global Food Security and Commodity Markets. RiceDSS brings together operational remotely sensed mapping of rice, crop production modeling, and weather forecasts to seamlessly generate near real time information on rice extent, growth stages, yield forecasts and statistical uncertainty. RiceDSS uses state-of-the-art web-GIS and mobile technologies to support visualization and delivery of information to futures markets and food security programs.