From 2 to 5 December 2025, the Regional Training Workshop on Advancing Satellite Crop Monitoring to Enhance Agricultural Resilience Using the CropWatch Cloud System in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was successfully held in Lima, Peru. Organized by ANSO, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS), and Peru's National Institute of Agricultural Innovation (INIA), this workshop marked ANSO's first specialized capacity-building initiative on crop monitoring in the LAC region.

At the opening ceremony, Mr. Sixto Enrique Sánchez Calderón (President, Peru's National Council of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (CONCYTEC)) warned that Latin America and the Caribbean—one of the world's breadbaskets—are buckling under climate-driven droughts, floods, and other disasters, yet still lack effective countermeasures. With UNCTAD's coordination, this workshop is now poised to close that gap. Dr. María Angelita Pozo López (General Manager, INIA), Ms. Feng Jingyuan (Program Officer, ANSO Secretariat), Ms. Zhang Liping (Chief, UNCTAD's Science, Technology and Innovation for Development Section), Mr. Javier Álvarez (UN Resident Coordinator/UNICEF Representative in Peru), and Mr. Diego Belevan (Director of STI & Energy, Peru's Ministry of Foreign Affairs) delivered remarks successively. They highlighted that droughts, floods and other hazards threaten food security, destabilize agricultural ecosystems and impact farming livelihoods—challenges exacerbated by insufficient satellite monitoring, delayed early warning, and lack of cross-regional data sharing. Against this backdrop, the CropWatch Cloud System and specialized training are vital to boost agricultural monitoring precision, establish efficient early warning, and enhance agricultural resilience.Feng also expressed high hopes that the workshop would unlock LAC's agricultural potential through technological empowerment, while ANSO reaffirms its steadfast commitment to supporting these initiatives for the benefit of regional and global development. Following the opening remarks, Prof. Wu Bingfang, Director of CropWatch at the AIRCAS, delivered a thematic lecture on the CropWatch cloud system's core advantages with an in-depth elaboration on its featured application tools.

The four-day workshop featured a curriculum that balanced theoretical depth and practical orientation, covering core modules such as basic operation of the CropWatch Cloud Platform and capacity building for its practical application, AI-supported agroecosystem mapping, preparation for data analysis, on-field practical training, thematic map production and national-scale analysis, and design of customized regional monitoring schemes. To ensure the training accurately met the needs of various countries, a "Country Profile Sharing" session was arranged on the first day. Representatives from participating countries, including Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, were invited to share their national agricultural production characteristics and monitoring technology needs. Based on this input, the training team further optimized the subsequent training content and practical cases to achieve "customized" teaching.

The workshop attracted more than 40 agricultural technicians, researchers and policymakers from the LAC region. Its successful holding not only effectively improved the participants' ability to apply the CropWatch system, but also built a bridge for technical exchange and cooperation in agricultural monitoring within the region. All participating parties stated that they were willing to take this workshop as an opportunity to deepen cooperation in areas such as agricultural remote sensing monitoring, disaster early warning, and data sharing.

During the workshop, representatives from the ANSO Secretariat and participants were also invited to visit INIA to strengthen the partnership.