FEWS NET Season and Year Definitions for Crop Data

Seasons and years for FEWS NET’s global subnational set of official crop statistic reporting are defined by carefully considering the country context.

Rather than using a fixed set of global standards, FEWS NET defines seasons and crop years based on identifiable features specific to each country’s seasons or year.

The following objectives and approaches are used to create consistency while capturing a wide range of variability:

1. Document the normal dates when crops are planted and harvested;

2. Document the Source Organizations and the conventions they use to define seasons and cropping cycles, and;

3. Clearly define, for each country, the conventions FEWS NET uses to define those seasons and years. 

Seasons

The FEWS NET seasons do not presently reflect the time-varying observed dates when planting or harvesting actually occurred in a given year. Instead, they are intended to clarify the general season timeframe for which crop production statistics are being reported.

A season may be based on features other than meteorological conditions, such as:

• Some crops in the ground develop independently from the prevailing season and/or weather around them (for example, river-fed crops, other ground-water irrigated crops, greenhouse-based systems, etc.); 

• Some countries have crops in the ground throughout the year, making seasonal cropping definitions appear almost arbitrary (for example, Colombia’s 1st six months are designated as Season A, and the last six months are designated as Season B). 

• A season may reflect the sequence in which a particular crop is put in the ground relative to other plantings that occur before or after it; 

• A season may simply be a period of time based upon the fiscal or accounting year practices used by a crop authority to identify annual production.

• In some countries, a specific season might occur during different dates that vary by latitude or by other geographic features (for example, in Brazil and Thailand);

• Often a season is not provided in a source statistics document, and every crop is defined as annual even if the crop is grown during a known period such as the main rainy season.

• A season can be the result of a relatively new production system that only recently became possible because of improved plant varieties and the resources needed to utilize them in a previously unused cropping window (for example, Brazil’s “third” crop).  

Cropping years and annual cropping cycles

The definition of a cropping year or annual cropping cycle can vary widely.

A year may be delimited by an Islamic (as in Afghanistan), Buddhist (as in Thailand and Laos), Ethiopian, or Gregorian calendar, by the fiscal year, or by the definition of an annual period used by a national commodity board.

Official crop statistic reporting attributed to a given year can sometimes even exceed a twelve-month period. In Thailand, the official reporting record of the 2023 cropping year includes official definitions for 2023 crops, 2024 crops, and several large commercial crops which are reported using two different reference year periods. In total, the official Thailand annual cropping year report covers 17 months. 

For more country-specific information about seasons and years, see the About Our Data pages.