Harvested Area and Yield for 175 Crops

Croplands cover ~15 million km2 of the planet and provide the bulk of the food and fiber essential to human well-being. Most global land cover data sets from satellites group croplands into just a few categories, thereby excluding information that is critical for answering key questions ranging from biodiversity conservation to food security to biogeochemical cycling. Information about agricultural land use practices like crop selection, yield, and fertilizer use is even more limited. Here we present land use data sets created by combining national, state, and county level census statistics with a recently updated global data set of croplands on a 5 minute by 5 minute (~10 km by 10 km) latitude/longitude grid. The resulting land use data sets depict circa the year 2000 the area (harvested) and yield of 175 distinct crops of the world.

Citation:

Monfreda, C., N. Ramankutty, and J. A. Foley (2008), Farming the planet: 2. Geographic distribution of crop areas, yields, physiological types, and net primary production in the year 2000, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB1022, doi: 10.1029/2007GB002947.

Contact:

Direct questions by email to earthstat.data@gmail.com or navin.ramankutty@ubc.ca

For additional information regarding publications and research, visit http://gli.environment.umn.edu/ or http://www.ramankuttylab.com

Data Products:

The following data products are included for each of 175 crops:

• Harvested Area: fractional:  Crop-specific data representing the average fractional proportion of a gridcell that was harvested in a crop during the 1997-2003 era.
• Harvested Area: hectares: Crop-specific data representing the average number of hectares harvested per land-area of a gridcell during the 1997-2003 era
• Yield : tons per hectare: Crop-specific data representing the average yield for a crop in tons per hectare during the 1997-2003 era
• Production: tons: Total crop production in metric tons on the land-area mass of a gridcell. Harvested area in hectares was multiplied by yield per hectare to create this data product.
  

Data Quality for harvested area and yield: These products represent the agricultural census data quality for harvested area and yield for each crop. Data quality categories:

• Value of 1: county level census data
• Value of 0.75: state level census data
• Value of 0.5: interpolated with census data from within 2 degrees latitude/longitude
• Value of 0.25: country level census data
• Value of 0: missing census data

Resolution:

• Spatial: Five minute by five minute resolution (~10km x 10km at equator)
• Temporal: Year 2000 – Average of census data between 1997-2003

Map Projection:

• Data presented as five-arc-minute, 4320 x 2160 cell grid
• Spatial Reference: GCS_WGS_1984
• Datum: D_WGS_1984
• Cell size: 0.083333 degrees
• Layer extent:
  • Top : 90
  • Left: -180
  • Right: 180
  • Bottom: -90

License:

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Methods:

• See page 10 of Monfreda et al. 2008 for complete discussion of technical methods.
• See page 5 of Monfreda et al. 2008 for information on sub-national statistics by country.

Agricultural Inventory Data:

We collected agricultural census and survey information on the areas and yields of 175 crops from the smallest political units reasonably obtainable for 206 countries. Data availability varied for different crops within each country, with most countries having subnational statistics for some crops but national statistics for others. Subnational data are one or two administrative levels below the national (i.e., state/province and county/district). These include 2299 political units one level below the national from 150 countries, and 19,751 units two levels below for 73 countries. The largest single source of subnational data is Agro-MAPS, a joint project between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE).

Agro-MAPS is a collection of subnational statistics on crop area, production, and yield for most countries in the world. For some crops, however, the Agro-MAPS data was missing or insufficiently detailed. To cover these gaps, we collected additional data from national census agencies and agricultural surveys. In particular, we turned to additional censuses and surveys to ensure county level data for the largest countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, India, the United States, and China. In certain instances we were only able to obtain subnational information on major crop groups (e.g., fruits or vegetables), which we used to proportionally distribute national level data from FAO to the state or county level.

When subnational statistics were unavailable, we relied on national figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s statistical databases [FAO, 2006a]. We collected
independent national level data for four countries that were absent from FAO: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Taiwan.

Frequently Asked Questions and Tips:

• Q: Why does the harvested area fraction exceed 1 (100% or more of a cell in a single crop)?
  • A: A grid cell may be more than 1.0 or 100% due to multiple harvests per year. For example, if a crop is produced in 60% of the grid cell’s area, and harvested twice in one year, that cell would have a value of 1.2, or 120%.
• These data sets are not intended to be interpreted at the individual grid cell level. Although it is presented at five-minute resolution, the best way to use these maps is to compare counties, states, regions, countries, or continents.
• Due to the nature of agricultural statistics, the major crops are also more reliable than the minor crops. In other words, be more careful when using bambara or broccoli data than when using wheat or maize data.
• Updates to include historical and more recent data are currently in progress. While agriculture has changed drastically in the past decade, we believe that these data represent the more complete and detailed source of spatial agricultural systems in existence.

EarthStat and FAO crop names and crop groups: