HarvestStat Consortium
The HarvestStat Consortium is collaboratively collating subnational agricultural statistics to produce a freely available global database for use in research and operations.
The databases underpinning HarvestStat date back to around 2005, when researchers at institutions including the International Food Policy Research Institute, McGill University, and the University of Minnesota began compiling a subnational crop production database for research purposes that grew to cover over 20,000 political units.
Starting in 2016 the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) compiled a database of over 11 million crop production data points for operational food security analysis. By combining these databases with those of LUCKINet, Harvard University, Stockholm Environment Institute, and the Rutgers Climate Impact Lab, the database has grown to over 14 million data points.
The data collected by all groups is now contributed towards this single database that forms the foundation of all HarvestStat datasets. FEWS NET makes this extensive, well-structured, and documented database accessible through the FEWS Data Warehouse (FDW). Housing the data in the FDW provides users with a comprehensive set of metadata for documentation and validation.
Although a wealth of data is available from agricultural services, the current landscape of data is fragmented in terms of what information is provided, how it is organized, and where it can be found. At times this data is not digitized. The HarvestStat Consortium is working to digitize, collate, and format agricultural production data into a unified database, then produce datasets that standardize, calibrate, and quality control that data.
Agricultural production statistics underpin diverse research efforts and development activities. Yet despite their critical importance, efforts to collate, update, and harmonize detailed sub-national agricultural production statistics are frequently redundant and incomplete due to the substantial time, effort, and resources required. This diagram summarizes the multiple data products, end users, and disciplines reliant on sub-national production statistics (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/adcb54).
With grateful acknowledgement of funding by:
