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The current CropWatch bulletin is based mainly on remotely sensed data for both climatic and crop condition data. The bulletin covers global, national, and regional-level agroclimatic conditions and the condition of crops that were growing or harvested between April and July 2019. For China, the bulletin presents China crop production, crop conditions for each of seven key agro-ecological zones, regional impacts of pests and diseases as well as trade prospects (import/export) of major crops. Special attention is paid to the major producers of maize, rice, wheat, and soybean. The focus section reports on food production estimates, global disaster events that occurred from April to July 2019 with an impact on agriculture, and the possibility of an El Niño event.
Key messages from the report:
- Global agroclimatic patterns: Global rainfall was 4% below average.Significant continental differences are nevertheless observed, with large rainfall deficits in Oceania (-30%), moderate deficits in East Asia and in South Asia and large positive anomalies in North America and central Asia. The largest area of spatially consistent positive temperature anomalies occurred in Eurasia and was centred on the Baltic States, extending into western Russia and Western Europe.
- Global crop production: CropWatch estimates the global 2019 production of the major commodities at 1045 million tonnes of maize, down 0.5% from 2018, 736 millions for rice (up 1.7%), 703 million tonnes of wheat (a 1.4% increase) and 323 million tonnes of soybeans, 1.2% lower than last year’s output.
- China crop production: Summer harvested crops, of which winter wheat accounts for more than 90% are put at 128 million tons, up 1.4% or 1.2 million tons compared to 2018. Autumn harvested crops (including maize, single rice, late rice, spring wheat, soybean, minor cereals, and tubers) are estimated by CropWatch to reach 455 million tons, down 0.5% or 2.1 million.
- Disasters: Prolonged drought and heat waves are reported for many areas, on all continents. Numerous episodes of excess and violent precipitation, often accompanied by landslides happened in the Africa countries and several areas in Asia. The situation of cyclones created widespread in south Asia countries, together with Mozambique and USA.
- El Niño: Neutral El Nino condition prevails across the Pacific Ocean during the current season of 2019.
Introduction
This CropWatch bulletin summarizes global crop condition developments and agroclimatic factors from April 1st to July 31st, 2019 through 4 zoom in from a global overview of agroclimatic indicators (Chapter 1) to detailed descriptions of crop and environmental conditions in large production zones (Chapter 2), to individual country analyses covering 42 major producers and exporters including agro-ecological zones (Chapter 3) and China (Chapter 4). A special focus section is included in Chapter 5, presents crop production for 2019, disaster events and an update on El Niño. This first part of the report includes the cover, table of contents, abbreviations, a short overview of the different sections of the bulletin and executive summary.DownloadChapter 1 Global agroclimatic patterns
Chapter 1 describes the CropWatch agroclimatic indicators for rainfall (RAIN), temperature (TEMP), and radiation (RADPAR), along with the agronomic indicator for potential biomass (BIOMSS) for sixty-five global Mapping and Reporting Units (MRU). Indicator values for all MRUs are provided in Annex A.DownloadChapter 2 Crop and environmental conditions in major production zones
Chapter 2 presents the same indicators—RAIN, TEMP, RADPAR, and BIOMSS—used in Chapter 1 and combines them with agronomic indicators—cropped arable land fraction (CALF), maximum vegetation condition index (VCIx), and minimum vegetation health index (VHIn)—to describe crop and environmental conditions in six global major production zones (MPZ): West Africa, North America, South America, South and southeast Asia, Western Europe, and Central Europe to western Russia. (See also Annex A for more information about these zones.)DownloadChapter 3 Core countries
Building on the global patterns presented in previous chapters, this chapter assesses the situation of crops in 41 key countries that represent the global major producers and exporters or otherwise are of global or CropWatch relevance. First, the overview section (3.1) pays attention to all countries worldwide, to provide some spatial and thematic detail to the overall features described in section 1.1. In section 3.2, more detail is provided for each of the CropWatch monitored countries, including analyses by key agro-ecological zones within the country. Additional information about indicators per country is provided in Annex A.DownloadChapter 4 China
After a brief overview of the agroclimatic and agronomic conditions in China over the reporting period (section 4.1), Chapter 4 describes the situation by region, focusing on the seven most productive agro-ecological regions of the east and south: Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Huanghuaihai, Loess region, Lower Yangtze, Southwest China, and Southern China (4.2). Additional information on the agroclimatic indicators for agriculturally important Chinese provinces are listed in table A.11 in Annex A.DownloadChapter 5 Focus and perspectives
Building on the CropWatch analyses presented in chapters 1 through 4, this chapter presents first early outlook of crop production for 2019 (section 5.1), as well as sections on recent disaster events (section 5.2) and an update on El Niño (5.3).DownloadAnnex A Agroclimatic indicators
Tables in this Annex provide additional information about the agroclimatic indicators—RAIN, TEMP, and RADPAR—as well as BIOMSS for the various CropWatch spatial units. Those units include the Monitoring and Reporting Units (MRU); the thirty-one main producing and exporting countries; and regions or provinces within large countries—Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States; and China.DownloadAnnex B Quick reference guide to CropWatch indicators, spatial units and methodologies
Annex B presents a brief overview of the CropWatch indicators and spatial units (including the MRUs, MPZs, and countries), along with a description of the CropWatch production estimation methodology and methodology to determine the severity of the occurrence.Download
