Felix Rembold

Kasimir Orlowski, Filip Sabo, Michele Meroni et al.

Accurate cocoa mapping is increasingly important for deforestation monitoring, supply-chain transparency, and regulatory applications. Spatial aggregation in conventional medium-resolution Earth observation (EO) imagery may limit cocoa detection in heterogeneous smallholder landscapes. In Cote d'Ivoire, we therefore evaluated how mapping performance varies across landscape conditions, whether very high resolution (VHR) imagery provides a meaningful advantage, and whether foundation-model embeddings improve decametric cocoa mapping. We developed models using 0.5 m Pleiades VHR imagery, a 10 m Sentinel-2 annual composite, and embeddings from TESSERA and AlphaEarth Foundations (AEF), and additionally assessed four publicly available cocoa mapping products. Performance was evaluated through a landscape-stratified accuracy assessment using 2,821 independently interpreted reference points distributed across gradients of tree cover density and landscape fragmentation. The VHR model achieved the highest performance (F1 = 0.92) and maintained F1-scores above 0.90 across all strata. Among the decametric inputs, TESSERA performed best (F1 = 0.86), followed by AEF (F1 = 0.82) and Sentinel-2 (F1 = 0.76). Of the existing cocoa products, the Kalischek product performed best (F1 = 0.83), comparable to the internally trained AEF model. Performance differences between VHR and decametric approaches increased with fragmentation and under low and high tree cover density conditions. Targeted VHR acquisition may therefore be particularly beneficial in complex cocoa landscapes, while foundation-model embeddings offer a scalable alternative for large-area mapping.

Mélissande Machefer, Michele Ronco, Anne-Claire Thomas et al.

Food security is a complex, multidimensional concept challenging to measure comprehensively. Effective anticipation, monitoring, and mitigation of food crises require timely and comprehensive global data. This paper introduces the Harmonized Food Insecurity Dataset (HFID), an open-source resource consolidating four key data sources: the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)/Cadre Harmonisé (CH) phases, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) IPC-compatible phases, and the World Food Program's (WFP) Food Consumption Score (FCS) and reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI). Updated monthly and using a common reference system for administrative units, the HFID offers extensive spatial and temporal coverage. It serves as a vital tool for food security experts and humanitarian agencies, providing a unified resource for analyzing food security conditions and highlighting global data disparities. The scientific community can also leverage the HFID to develop data-driven predictive models, enhancing the capacity to forecast and prevent future food crises.

Filip Sabo, Michele Meroni, Maria Piles et al.

We present an application of a foundation model for small- to medium-sized tabular data (TabPFN), to sub-national yield forecasting task in South Africa. TabPFN has recently demonstrated superior performance compared to traditional machine learning (ML) models in various regression and classification tasks. We used the dekadal (10-days) time series of Earth Observation (EO; FAPAR and soil moisture) and gridded weather data (air temperature, precipitation and radiation) to forecast the yield of summer crops at the sub-national level. The crop yield data was available for 23 years and for up to 8 provinces. Covariate variables for TabPFN (i.e., EO and weather) were extracted by region and aggregated at a monthly scale. We benchmarked the results of the TabPFN against six ML models and three baseline models. Leave-one-year-out cross-validation experiment setting was used in order to ensure the assessment of the models capacity to forecast an unseen year. Results showed that TabPFN and ML models exhibit comparable accuracy, outperforming the baselines. Nonetheless, TabPFN demonstrated superior practical utility due to its significantly faster tuning time and reduced requirement for feature engineering. This renders TabPFN a more viable option for real-world operation yield forecasting applications, where efficiency and ease of implementation are paramount.