The activities will be focused on some target provinces providing technical assistance to provincial staff for timely, electronic reporting on crop stage and condition and the establishment of fully operational provincial offices.

The key approach proposed includes:

• Assessments of the capability of provincial crop reporting to produce and make publicly available timely market-oriented reports on crop estimation and forecasts
• Guidelines for the preparation of reports and bulletins that use satellite based crop information and vegetation indices
• Support for the regular and timely dissemination of actionable crop reports for public consumption in the selected provinces
• The set-up of fully functional operational units in selected provincial agriculture offices as demonstrators for the larger project
• The establishment of a national agricultural expert system

These reports will provide satellite-based estimates of crop areas and vegetation indices depicting crop growth patterns. They will also provide information on the status of other natural resources and agricultural inputs, as available, from within the country e.g. fertilizers and irrigation availability during a cropping season and crop yield and production forecasts for different seasons.