Afghanistan Data Book

Last update: August 15, 2024

This page contains information about some of the data available in the FEWS NET Data Explorer (FDE) for Afghanistan. This is not a comprehensive guide.

For information about using the filters and fields for specific domains in the FDE, see Choose a Data Domain.

Summary table

Country food security context

Statistical reporting units

Afghanistan usually uses administrative units as their statistical reporting units.

Administrative (admin) units are the geographical areas into which a country is divided. FEWS NET uses the following terminology: National boundary = admin 0, First sub-national division = admin 1 (e.g., states in the United States), Second sub-national division = admin 2 (e.g., counties in the United States), and so on.

Admin 1: Province (wilyat).

Admin 2: District (wuleswali).

Crop data

Explore our crop data.

View our documentation on using the Crop Domain.

Agricultural data is reported only at the province level. Cotton statistics are reported both at the province level and at the level of 5 “cotton” regions, which include several provinces each but are not used for other purposes.

Crop estimate data sources

The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) is the principal source of crop estimates for Afghanistan.

Crop statistics are disseminated in yearly Statistical Yearbooks published by the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA). A complete series of yearbooks are available in the FEWS NET document management system.

There may be other reporting mechanisms and dissemination systems inside the Ministry of Agriculture that provide amended versions of the final agricultural estimates published in the yearbooks; if so, they have not yet been acquired and may explain divergences between NSIA estimates and what FAOSTAT labels as official estimates. Between 2008 and 2022, these differences average between .29 and .57% for wheat area and production estimates.

For NSIA and FAO maize estimates for the same period, FEWS NET has identified and amended a number of likely transcriptional and/or math errors (e.g. off by a factor of 10) at the level of different provincial maize reporting. These adjustments make FDW maize estimates differ from both NSIA and FAO’s by an average of 11% for area, and 17.5% for production, especially between 2014-2016 and 2020-2022.

The structure of tabular reporting used by the NSIA to report annual crop estimates varies by crop and requires close attention when extracting or visually comparing agricultural data from original sources. For some crops, columns in the table are ordered as Area, Yield, and Production, while for others, the table is structured as Production, Yield, and Area.

The Reporting Portal of the Statistic Directorate, Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (http://180.94.71.228:1030/Home/Index) is a URL to watch for data and information directly from the Ministry, if it is not for official use only (this has not yet been determined).

Year and season definitions

The annual season runs between July 1 and June 30 (e.g., July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024). The Winter cropping season usually begins in November and finishes in May/June, and a Spring season runs between
March and July. Most wheat is planted in late September and October and is most often
harvested by the end of June.

The Year is the year of the planting, which may occur with different crops and production systems between September and March. An agricultural year is often denoted as YYYY=YYYY/ZZZZ (e.g., in a two-date notation the year of the 2019 harvests is 2018).

Consistent with other countries in the region (e.g. Iran) the Afghanistan hijra calendar is at a
622-year offset from the Gregorian calendar used by FEWS NET and many other countries.

Per the Statistical Yearbook, 2021, 2nd version, a resolution from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has changed the year used to date source reporting, with the previous solar year 1400 becoming lunar year 1443. It appears also to change the fiscal year from a start on the first of April to a new start date of approximately July 7th. Further confirmation is required regarding any planned change to the country’s annual crop reporting cycle.

As the FDW uses a Gregorian calendar, this change does not have any impact on the
comparability of crop estimations made after 2021 with those made before 2021.

Primary crops

Crop estimates are available for the following:

• Grain crops: wheat, maize, barley, and rice.

• Cotton

• Saffron

• Soybean (newly available)

• Fruit crops: grapes, pomegranates, apples, peaches, and almonds.

Ministry of Agriculture news notices indicate that there are additional crop statistics for watermelon, but these have not been disseminated in NSIA reporting.