Abstract
Knowing where, when, and how much rice is planted and harvested is crucial information for understanding the effects of policy, trade, and global and technological change on food security. We developed RiceAtlas, a spatial database on the seasonal distribution of the world’s rice production. It consists of data on rice planting and harvesting dates by growing season and estimates of monthly production for all rice-producing countries. Sources used for planting and harvesting dates include global and regional databases, national publications, online reports, and expert knowledge. Monthly production data were estimated based on annual or seasonal production statistics, and planting and harvesting dates. RiceAtlas has 2,725 spatial units. Compared with available global crop calendars, RiceAtlas is nearly ten times more spatially detailed and has nearly seven times more spatial units, with at least two seasons of calendar data, making RiceAtlas the most comprehensive and detailed spatial database on rice calendar and production.
Highlights
Background & SummaryRice is the world’s most important food crop
It is harvested from over 163 million ha in more than 100 countries. It is grown in diverse cropping systems and environments—from single crop systems in temperate and tropical regions in both rainfed and irrigated conditions, to intensive monoculture in irrigated areas in the tropics where rice is grown two or three times per year
Information on the distribution of global rice production by region and country can be derived from readily available statistics, information on its distribution within a year is often lacking
Summary
Rice is the world’s most important food crop It is harvested from over 163 million ha in more than 100 countries (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home). Linking information on production and area to the crop calendar can help analyze spatio-temporal variation in rice production This can contribute to an improved ability to answer questions about food security. Regional resources include crop calendars for Latin America and the Caribbean[1] and for Africa (http://www.fao.org/agriculture/seed/cropcalendar/welcome.do), which have information on the planting and harvesting periods of rice and other major crops by agro-ecological zone. Because of the need to develop a spatially explicit global database of rice calendars that includes detailed information on rice areas with more than one rice crop in a year, we compiled the most detailed available datasets of rice planting and harvesting dates by growing season in all rice-producing countries, and linked the database to subnational production data. RiceAtlas contributes to the GEOGLAM (Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring)[4] initiative and regional partnerships, such as the Asian Rice Crop Estimation and Monitoring initiative (Asia-RiCE), by providing information for agricultural monitoring requirements, satellite data acquisition plans, and global crop outlook
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