Baseline Data

The Sub-National Crop Calendars

The Crop Monitor sub-national crop calendars are based on a combination of the best available data from different international agencies, national ministries, and expert knowledge from country partners. For the Crop Monitor for AMIS sub-national calendars, the USDA Major World Crop Areas and Climatic Profiles was used as a base to create the crop calendars at the national level. The Crop Monitor for Early Warning sub-national calendars used FAO GIEWS, FEWS NET, and national ministries as a base to create the crop calendars at the national level. Then for both Crop Monitors, each country was broken down into sub-national regions through the combination of agro-ecological zones, administrative level 1 FAO GAUL units, production statistics, and national partner inputs. The sub-national regions are each an aggregation of administrative FAO GAUL level 1 units or in some cases the administrative level 1 units themselves.

In order to provide a finer detailed product, the crop calendars are displayed in bi-monthly time steps. The crop calendars consist of five different phenological phases/stages which are broadly applicable across most crops.

• Planting through Early Vegetative*

• Vegetative through Reproductive

• Ripening through Harvest

• Harvest (End of Season)

• Out of Season

*Planting through Early Vegetative includes the dormancy stage of winter wheat where applicable.

Winter wheat stages across AMIS countries in the second half of November

While most crop calendars at the national level identify the planting and harvesting phases, the Vegetative through Reproductive and the Ripening through Harvesting phases were added in order to enable analysts to evaluate crop conditions during critical crop development phases which are related to final yields. The added phonological phases enriched the Crop Monitor reports in the context of outlooks for production.

The crop calendars are divided into different cropping seasons where there are multiple cycles of a crop (e.g. winter wheat and spring wheat are differentiated). For the countries that have multiple cycles, the calendars are aligned to display the largest producing cycle as the “first” crop and the smaller producing cycle(s) as the second or third crop depending on production, as displayed in below Crop Season Nomenclature table.

These crop calendars are continually being refined as Crop Monitor partners compile improved information from a variety of satellite and in situ sources, and as Crop Monitor methodologies (e.g. administrative unit sizes) are revisited and altered in line with both end-user needs and evolving scientific understanding of global croplands dynamic. For the purposes of the crop calendar releases, they shall be done on versioning bases with accompanying notes to track the changes between versions.