{"id":"crop-production-and-irrigation","slug":"crop-production-and-irrigation","name":"Crop Production and Irrigated Area Dataset","description":"National annual production, harvested area and yield for six water-relevant crops — wheat, maize, rice, sugar cane, seed cotton and sorghum — from 1961, with the area equipped for irrigation and the area actually irrigated. The crops were chosen to carry a water story: three staples whose failure is a food-security event, the two that define irrigation demand where they are grown, and the drought-tolerant one whose area rises when the others fail.","methodology":"Collected from two FAOSTAT bulk domains. Every FAOSTAT value carries a flag saying where it came from, and Hydrionis reads it rather than treating the file as uniform: official figures and figures from external organisations are stored as reported, FAO’s own estimates as estimated, and values imputed by a receiving agency are not stored at all — collecting an upstream backfill is backfilling. A series takes the weakest basis it contains. FAO’s own regional and world aggregates, published in the same files, are not adopted under Hydrionis region names. Countries resolve through the UN M49-to-ISO3 crosswalk rather than by name, and the forty-five FAOSTAT areas that do not resolve — dissolved states and territories Hydrionis does not hold — are reported rather than dropped quietly.","domains":["agriculture"],"metricIds":["crop-production-wheat","crop-area-harvested-wheat","crop-yield-wheat","crop-production-maize","crop-area-harvested-maize","crop-yield-maize","crop-production-rice","crop-area-harvested-rice","crop-yield-rice","crop-production-sugar-cane","crop-area-harvested-sugar-cane","crop-yield-sugar-cane","crop-production-seed-cotton","crop-area-harvested-seed-cotton","crop-yield-seed-cotton","crop-production-sorghum","crop-area-harvested-sorghum","crop-yield-sorghum","land-equipped-for-irrigation","land-actually-irrigated"],"subjectScope":"Countries, as held by Hydrionis; FAO aggregates and unresolvable areas excluded","cadence":"annual","version":"1.0.0","released":"2026-08-27","changelog":[{"version":"1.0.0","date":"2026-08-27","summary":"First release.","additions":["Production, harvested area and yield for six crops, and two irrigated-area measures, for 195 countries from 1961."]}],"limitations":["National figures throughout. They say nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both.","Harvested area excludes what was sown and lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic — the worst years are described least well.","Land equipped for irrigation is capacity, not use, and is often carried forward unchanged between reporting years: a flat series may mean \"not resurveyed\". Land actually irrigated is reported by very few countries and not on a common definition.","Neither irrigation measure is a volume of water. Hydrionis holds no FAO figure for agricultural water withdrawal in this dataset.","An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish.","FAO revises history. The whole series is republished each release, so figures cited previously may change."],"context":{"hydrionisClass":"water-pressure","whyHeld":"Agriculture is the largest water user on earth, and these are the clearest published record of what that water was for. Crop area and yield are where irrigation demand comes from and where drought shows up in something people notice. None of it is a measurement of water: a hectare of rice is not a volume abstracted, and a bad yield year is not evidence that a river ran low.","waterRelevance":["Irrigation demand, and where it is concentrated","Agricultural abstraction pressure on rivers and aquifers","The consequences of drought that reach people","Competition for water between farming, cities and industry"],"suitableUses":["National crop production, area and yield over six decades","Contrasting a drought-tolerant crop with a drought-sensitive one in the same country and year","Showing crop yield beside rainfall or a drought index on a shared time axis, within one country","Comparing irrigation capacity with the far sparser record of irrigation actually used"],"unsuitableUses":["Any statement about a farm, field, scheme or basin — these are national totals","Treating irrigated area as a volume of water abstracted","Attributing a yield change to weather without evidence: seed, fertiliser, mechanisation, policy and conflict move yields as much as rainfall does","Comparing yields between countries as though the difference were hydrological","Reading a flat equipped-irrigation series as a stable one; it is often an unrepeated survey"],"joinDimensions":[{"kind":"shared-identifier","on":"UN M49 country codes, mapped to ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 through the published UN crosswalk, then to Hydrionis country geographies","limitation":"Joins a country to a country and nothing finer. It does not place a crop in a basin, a catchment or an irrigation scheme, and Hydrionis holds no sub-national agricultural geography to place it in."},{"kind":"time-only","on":"Shared calendar years with any other Hydrionis annual series","limitation":"A crop year is not a calendar year in much of the world, and FAOSTAT reports against the calendar year in which the harvest mainly fell. Aligning a harvest with the rainfall of the same calendar year can therefore be off by a season."}],"relationshipConfidence":"contextual","eligibility":{"api":true,"download":true,"overlay":true,"publicPage":false}},"observationCount":123721,"seriesCount":2503,"subjectCount":190,"from":1961,"to":2024,"sourceIds":["fao-faostat"],"units":["ha","kg/ha","t"],"redistributable":true,"commerciallyReusable":false,"rightsNote":"Redistribution is permitted by every contributing source.","citation":"Hydrionis (2026), Crop Production and Irrigated Area Dataset, version 1.0.0. Retrieved from https://hydrionis.com/data/datasets/crop-production-and-irrigation/","downloads":[{"file":"/downloads/observations-agriculture-fao-faostat.csv","format":"CSV","label":"agriculture observations from FAO (144,556 rows)"}],"apiPath":"/api/v1/datasets/crop-production-and-irrigation.json","lastFetched":"2026-08-27","fields":[{"id":"crop-production-wheat","name":"Wheat production","definition":"Quantity of wheat harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-wheat","name":"Wheat harvested area","definition":"Area from which wheat was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-wheat","name":"Wheat yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of wheat per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"crop-production-maize","name":"Maize production","definition":"Quantity of maize harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-maize","name":"Maize harvested area","definition":"Area from which maize was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-maize","name":"Maize yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of maize per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"crop-production-rice","name":"Rice production","definition":"Quantity of rice harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-rice","name":"Rice harvested area","definition":"Area from which rice was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-rice","name":"Rice yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of rice per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"crop-production-sugar-cane","name":"Sugar cane production","definition":"Quantity of sugar cane harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-sugar-cane","name":"Sugar cane harvested area","definition":"Area from which sugar cane was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-sugar-cane","name":"Sugar cane yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of sugar cane per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"crop-production-seed-cotton","name":"Seed cotton production","definition":"Quantity of seed cotton harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-seed-cotton","name":"Seed cotton harvested area","definition":"Area from which seed cotton was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-seed-cotton","name":"Seed cotton yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of seed cotton per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"crop-production-sorghum","name":"Sorghum production","definition":"Quantity of sorghum harvested in a country in a calendar or crop year.","unit":"t","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Production reflects area and yield together, so a change in it does not say which moved. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well."},{"id":"crop-area-harvested-sorghum","name":"Sorghum harvested area","definition":"Area from which sorghum was actually harvested in a country in a year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. Area is also not a water figure: two countries with the same area under a crop can differ by an order of magnitude in the water they apply to it."},{"id":"crop-yield-sorghum","name":"Sorghum yield","definition":"Harvested quantity of sorghum per hectare of harvested area.","unit":"kg/ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"A national figure. It says nothing about any farm, field or irrigation scheme, and a national average conceals the irrigated and rain-fed halves of a country that has both. Yield differences between countries are driven by seed, fertiliser, mechanisation and irrigation as much as by weather, so a low yield is not evidence of a dry year. Within one country over time, the weather signal is far clearer — which is the comparison this metric supports. Harvested area excludes what was sown and then lost before harvest, so a severe drought can shrink the area statistic rather than the yield statistic. The worst years are the ones this measure describes least well. An extreme yield on a very small harvested area is usually a crop cut green and weighed fresh rather than a grain harvest, which the FAOSTAT item does not distinguish. Read yields on areas of a few hundred hectares with that in mind."},{"id":"land-equipped-for-irrigation","name":"Land equipped for irrigation","definition":"Area furnished with infrastructure to supply water to crops, whether or not it was irrigated in a given year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"Equipped area is a stock that changes slowly and is often carried forward unchanged between reporting years, so a flat series may mean \"not resurveyed\" rather than \"unchanged\". It is not a measure of water abstracted, and two countries with equal equipped area can abstract very different volumes."},{"id":"land-actually-irrigated","name":"Land actually irrigated","definition":"Area to which water was actually applied in a given year.","unit":"ha","nativeGeography":["country"],"comparabilityNotes":"Reported by very few countries and not on a common definition — some count area irrigated at least once, others area under full irrigation. Sparse coverage means an apparent global trend is usually a change in who reported. It remains an area, never a volume of water."}]}