EarthStat Data

Description

One of the best sources of global agricultural data is Earthstat, a digital depository of data developed collaboratively over many years by scientists from the University of Minnesota and UBC. Most of the data were compiled using a data fusion technique to combine agricultural census data (which are coarse resolution, anywhere from county to country-level data) with finer resolution satellite-derived land-cover data to create agricultural maps with greater spatial detail. The final data are raster maps (geotiffs, pixels are approximately 10km by 10km) each portraying one variable. Data available include:

Total cropland and pasture area in 2000
the harvested area, yield, and production for 175 crops in 2000
Greenhouse gas emissions from croplands
Climate variation effects on crop yields for maize, soybean, rice, and wheat
Yield trends and changes for maize, soybean, rice, and wheat
Water depletion (% refers to water depletion of watershed)
- 1= <5%
- 2= 5-25%
- 5= Dry-Year
- 6= Seasonal
- 7= 75-100%
- 8= >100%

Yield gaps for major crops
Nutrient/fertilizer application for major crops
Total nutrient balance (for 140 crops)
Carbon stocks in potential natural vegetation
Crop allocation to food, feed, non-food
- DeliveredkcalFraction (0-1): the proportion of kilocalories in a given cell that are directly eaten as opposed to used for feeding animals or biofuels
- GlobalFoodkcal (# calories): the number of kilocalories in a pixel that goes toward food for people (per year). Note that the values are very large, but you can use the raster calculator to derive more useful units (such as the number of people that could be fed annually per hectare)
- GlobalFeedkcal (# calories): the number of kilocalories that goes to animal feed
- GlobalNonFoodkcal (# calories): the number of kilocalories that is used for other purposes
- Glbkcal (# calories): Total kilocalories produced for all types of allocations (sum of Food/Feed/NonFood)
harvested area for 4 crops across the time period 1995-2005
- Harvested Area (0-1): represents the average fractional proportion of a grid cell that was harvested in a crop during the 1997-2003 era
- Yield (tons per hectare): represents the average yield for a crop in tons per hectare during the 1997-2003 era
caloric fraction (the proportion of crop production that is directly eaten)

Metadata

Metadata Component	Description
Theme	Agriculture
Source	University of Minnesota and UBC
Purpose	To provide data that can help solve the grand challenge of feeding a growing global population while reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment
Time Frame	Variable, from 1995 to 2000
File Type	Spatial
File Format	GeoTiff, some .shp available
Structure	Raster
Projection and coordinate system	Geographic - WGS 1984
Extent	Global
Resolution or scale	10km

Common Problems

These data are best used over broad regions, and are not detailed enough to accurately represent smaller regions. Be aware of this limitation.
There are limitations specific to each dataset, please see the metadata for your particular dataset for more information.

Downloading Instructions

Go to http://www.earthstat.org
Scroll down the page to see the list of available datasets. You can download them directly from that page by clicking the "download data" button directly, or you can get more information on the data by clicking "more about this data". If you click the latter, a page will pop up with lots of information and metadata on that particular dataset.
The file will download as a zipped folder containing all the Geotiff files as well as a metadata PDF. There may be additional documents, such as an excel file with the data by country (this is found in the water depletion dataset, for example).

Restrictions on Use

Data may be freely downloaded for research, study, or teaching, but must be cited appropriately. Re-release of the data, or incorporation of the data into a commercial product, is allowed only with explicit permission.