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A STUDY ON EVALUATION OF WORLD AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY USING 
SATELLITE DATA AND GIS 
Shiro OCHI', Ryosuke SHIBASAKI, Atsushi HIRAKOBA 
Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo 
7-22 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Japan, 106-0032 
*E-mail: ochi@cc.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp 
Commission VII, Working Group 5 
KEY WORDS: Agricultural Productivity, NPP, Biomass, Land Use, Global 
ABSTRACT: 
There are a lot of arguments whether the Earth has the capacity to supply sufficient food for the 
expanding population. In this paper, world agricultural productivity map will be generated from 
Satellite data and GIS. The relationship between the statistic data of agricultural production and 
NPP data is estimated in country base after extraction of agricultural field by Remote Sensing 
classification. NPP can be computed using NDVI of NOAA AVHRR(8km resolution) data for 10 years 
from 1983 with combination with PAR data derived from TOMS data, and climate data. À “Conversion 
Ratio” was defined as the ratio converting the total NPP amount to total crop production in a country 
in a year., and calculated using calculated annual amount NPP on crop field defined in land use map 
classified from Remote Sensing data. 
Finally a potential productivity is evaluated considering the 
availability of water resources and land use by GIS operation. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The world population, which was 2.5 billion in 
1960 and 
over 10 billion in 2050. It is very much required 
is now 5.9 billion, is estimated to be 
to increase the agricultural production to avoid 
the world food crisis. This paper focuses on the 
estimation of the future agricultural production 
excluding sea food and stock farm products. The 
increase of agricultural production was caused 
by the increase of the agricultural field as well 
as the increase of the agricultural productivity 
per an unit area of agricultural field. 
It is observed that the area of agricultural field 
was slightly increasing in the last 30 years, 
however the productivity was raised very 
significantly due to input of chemical fertilizer 
and pesticide, introduction of high-production 
crop species and expansion of irrigated area. 
When we discuss about the future world 
agricultural production to support the world 
population, 
areas and productivity are not anticipated, 
the same increase of production 
because neither the expansion of production 
area nor the agricultural environmental 
resources, such as water resources and soil 
fertilities, are hopeful in the future. 
The objectives of this study are summarized as 
follows: 
1) To estimate the global 
productivity by using NPP which can be 
calculated using Satellite data and 
climate data. 
2) To evaluate the global potential of 
agricultural productivity by considering 
agricultural 
both geographical and environmental 
restrictions. 
2. METHODOLOGY 
2.1 NPP Estimation using R.S. Data 
NPP(Net Primary Production) can be estimated 
using parameter model, called “Production 
Efficiency Approach”(Ruimy, 1994). The model 
requires parameters such as APAR(Absorbed 
Photosynthetically Active Radiation) data and 
efficiency index( e ) 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 7, Budapest, 1998