A special symposium on “Advances in the Use of Earth Observations for Crop Modeling and Monitoring for Food Security” has been organized by NASA harvest partners (Dr. Chris Justice and Dr. Varaprasad Bandaru) along with Dr. Jerry Hatfield, a members of the AgMIP Executive Committee at ASA-CSSA 2018 meetings held from Nov 4-7 at Baltimore, MD. In this symposium, NASA harvest partners presented on various topics related to the use of earth observations in agriculture applications. Firstly, Dr. Christopher Justice talked about historical developments in the use of earth observations in various crop monitoring programs (e.g. AgRISTARS) and briefed ongoing activities of NASA harvest program. Another partner, Dr. Matthew Hansen presented about global crop type mapping activities within his group using various satellite observations and highlighted some challenges associated with crop type mapping in small agriculture. Dr. William Salas, a partner from Applied Geosolutions talked about SAR applications in the crop mapping and modeling, and briefed about their efforts on capacity building in the use of SAR data by different agencies and partners. Finally, Dr. Varaprasad Bandaru talked about the remote sensing modeling framework and its application in crop yield assessment and crop forecasting.