HarvestStat-Africa: Open-Access Harmonized Subnational Crop Statistics

Overview

The HarvestStat-Africa is a repository that contains cleaned and harmonized subnational global crop production data for Africa from various sources, including the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

This repository provides access to a comprehensive crop dataset that allows researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to explore trends and patterns from the subnational to the global level, enabling better-informed decisions related to food security, trade, and development.

Data sources

The data in this repository is compiled from various sources, including:

• Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This is the primary source of information
  • FEWS NET Data Warehouse (FDW)
• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
  • FAOSTAT
• National agricultural agencies

Repository structure

This repository is organized as follows:

• data/: stores raw and intermediate crop statistics generated during internal processing.
• docs/: contains documentation related to the data.
• notebook/: includes Jupyter notebook and Python files for processing crop data for each country.
• public/: holds the semi-final & final processed datasets in CSV, Parquet, and GeoPackage formats, ready for public use.

Setting up the environment

To set up the environment using environment.yml, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/HarvestStat/HarvestStat-Africa.git
   cd HarvestStat-Africa

2. Create the conda environment:

   conda env create -f environment.yml

3. Activate the environment:

   conda activate hvstat

4. Start your preferred development environment (e.g., Jupyter Notebook, VSCode):

Current data status

HarvetStat currently contains subnational crop statistics for 33 countries.

• Admin-1 level: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe
• Admin-2 level: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, Uganda, Zambia

Data access

The data in this repository is available in the public folder in CSV and GeoPackage formats.

To access the data, download the files from the public folder.

• hvstat_africa_data_{version}.csv: The final processed crop statistics dataset.
• hvstat_africa_boundary_{version}.gpkg: Boundary data for subnational administrative units.

The version of the dataset is specified in the filename. The current version is v1.0.

The official release version is available on Dryad - HarvestStat Africa.

Data structure

The dataset contains the following columns:

Column Name	Description
fnid	FEWS NET's unique geographic unit identifier
country	Name of the country
country_code	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code
admin_1	Name of the first-level administrative unit
admin_2	Name of the second-level administrative unit (if applicable)
product	Name of the crop product
season_name	Name of the growing season
planting_year	Year when planting begins
planting_month	Month when planting begins
harvest_year	Year when harvesting ends
harvest_month	Month when harvesting ends
crop_production_system	Type of crop production system (e.g., irrigated, rainfed, etc.)
qc_flag	Quality control flag (0 = no flag, 1 = outlier, 2 = low variance)
area	Cropped area (hectares; ha)
production	Crop quantity produced (metric tonnes; mt)
yield	Crop yield (metric tonnes per hectare; mt/ha)

For details, please see the paper in the Citation section.

Citation

The data in this repository is available for free and unrestricted use. Users are encouraged to cite the following:

D. Lee, W. Anderson, X. Chen, F. Davenport, S. Shukla, R. Sahajpale, M. Budde, J. Rowland, J. Verdin, L. You, M. Ahouangbenoni, K. Davis, E. Kebede, S. Ehrmannk, C. Justice, and C. Meyer. (2024), HarvestStat Africa – Harmonized Subnational Crop Statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa. EarthArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31223/X5M123.

BibTeX

@article{lee_eaxv2024,
  author       = {Lee, Donghoon and
                  Anderson, Weston and
                  Chen, Xuan and
                  Davenport, Frank and
                  Shukla, Shraddhanand and
                  Sahajpal, Ritvik and
                  Budde, Michael and
                  Rowland, James and
                  Verdin, Jim and
                  You, Liangzhi and
                  Ahouangbenon, Matthieu and
                  Davis, Kyle Frankel and
                  Kebede, Endalkachew and
                  Ehrmann, Steffen and
                  Justice, Christina and
                  Meyer, Carsten},
  title        = {{HarvestStat Africa – Harmonized Subnational Crop Statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa}},
  year         = {2024},
  journal      = {EarthArXiv},
  note         = {Preprint},
  doi          = {10.31223/X5M123},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.31223/X5M123}
}

How to contribute

Contributions to this repository are welcome, including new data sources or improvements to the existing data. To contribute, please create a pull request with a clear description of the changes proposed.

Contact

• Please contact Donghoon Lee ([email protected] and Weston Anderson [email protected]) for any questions or collaborations.
  
• Users are encouraged to open an issue for questions, feedback, or bug reports.

License

The data in this repository is licensed under the MIT License.