Big Earth Data Supports Sustainable Food Production: Practices and Prospects

Ensuring food security is a fundamental issue for global sustainable development. Sustainable food production is the basis for food security and an effective approach to address global challenges such as climate change, land degradation, and ecological degradation. At present, there is a data gap in the monitoring and assessment of the sustainability of food production, and the supporting role of Big Earth Data is increasingly prominent. This paper summarizes the current practices of Big Earth Data in support of sustainable food production, including the role of earth observation technology in the monitoring of various elements of food production system, the application of multi-source data fusion in the monitoring of comprehensive food production system, and the assessment of the sustainability of food production. Based on the review, according the framework of four levers for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we proposed two suggestions for future development on Big Earth Data in support of sustainable food production: (1) integrating Big Earth Data with multidisciplinary models to promote knowledge discovery thus supporting governance and (2) integrating Big Earth Data with technological innovation to build intelligent agriculture for on-farm sustainable food production system.