The Crop Domain
The Crop domain provides crop plantation and production information including area harvested, area planted, quantity produced, and yield.
FEWS NET practices for standardizing crop data
When crop statistics are published by the source organizations, most will have some data points that are missing or seem like they may be erroneous. FEWS NET has standard practices to address these cases.
Missing data
Sources often document how they handle the missing data. Regardless of how a source organization documents missing data, FEWS NET represents it as follows:
0 (zed/zero): Used for the estimate of area planted, yield, and area harvested in cases where the source indicates no planting and/or production, no matter how the source indicates that. In many such cases, the source may only indicate this condition with a blank, which we normally treat as no area or production. We never use a “-” symbol to represent zed/zero, although some spreadsheets will use this symbol to display a value of zed/zero visually.
NC: Used when the source crop data is incomplete but it is clear that there should have been a value recorded. This is most often the case, for example, if the source provides a production estimate, but, for whatever the reason, no data point is given for area planted, area harvested, and/or yield. Many source orgs only provide one of the two area estimates (area planted and area harvested). In these cases, we insert an NC in the missing value’s place.
NA: Used if we are relatively certain that there was planting or production, but for whatever reason no estimate was provided by the source. This is sometimes the case when a source confirms it will not publish an estimate because there are too few producers of a crop, and to publish the estimate would violate the confidentiality expected by an individual farmer/producer.
Erroneous data
Clearly erroneous estimates are often found in source org reporting. In general, FEWS NET prefers to be conservative in assuming it knows when this has happened and how it should fix the error. When the cause of a clearly suspicious and likely erroneous estimate is not easily discerned, no change should be made and the source estimate should remain as it was reported.
When the likely cause of the suspicious estimate is easier to interpret, FEWS NET may consider “correcting” the estimate/s. As always, if possible, note should be made of corrections being applied to the source data. Cases where corrections may be made include:
A misplaced decimal
A mislabeled table
A weight or area measure being incorrectly, or not at all, converted
Using the Crop Domain
The Crop domain is broken into two sections:
1. Search and Filter
You can search by various criteria including:
Data source document: name and organization
Data series: name, description, and metadata
Learn more about search functionality in FDE.
You can filter the available data series using one or more of the following criteria:
Start date and End date: Filters data series by the period dates of all data points within the series. All data series with at least one data point that has a period date inside the date range will be displayed.
Geographic: Filters by crop location. This filter aggregates items into a multi-level lists (e.g., admin 1 units are aggregated into countries, which are aggregated into regions). Selecting the higher-level item in the list will automatically select all the lower-level items in the list.
Note: The International category in this filter contains countries not currently monitored by FEWS NET.
You must select one or more geographic areas before choosing additional filters.
Product: Filters by commodity or service, classified using a modified FEWS NET version of the UN CPC v2. This filters aggregates items into a multi-level lists. Selecting the higher-level item in the list will automatically select all the lower-level items in the list.
Indicator: Filters by a metric of interest and allows for meaningful comparisons over time. The indicator options for the crop domain are area harvested, area planted, quantity produced, and yield.
Data Source Document: Filters by the name of the document used as the primary source of information or data.
2. Data Visualization and Export
Visualize
The Crop domain currently includes a Table visualization. The Metadata tab contains descriptions and definitions of the metadata included in the table and export data.
If you have selected dates in the filter section, these visualizations will only contain data points with an associated period date within the specified date range. Data points within the selected data series with a period date outside of the specified date range will not be displayed.
Export
The Crop domain includes the following export options:
File format: Choose from one of the available file formats. This will apply to both downloads and refreshable links.
Download: Provides a download of a static dataset. This will export only the data series that you have selected.
Copy link: Copies a refreshable link that connects directly to the FEWS NET Data Warehouse database server, allowing Excel, your browser, or another application to automatically fetch data from the server whenever the link is accessed.