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The February CropWatch Bulletin is based primarily on remote sensing data as well as agro-climatic information and field surveys. The scope is global and comprehensive. Focusing on October 2019 to January 2020, chapters cover global, national, and regional agroclimatic conditions and agronomic conditions in 43 key countries including China. The focus section reports on food production prediction for countries in Southern Hemisphere, tropical and sub-tropical regions and recent disaster events, specially the impact of desert locust.
Key messages from the report:
- Global agro-climatic conditions: Another temperature record in ONDJ was set. Rainfall also greatly departed from the 15-year average mainly due to high precipitation in Africa.
- Desert locust impacts: Desert locust outbreak caused limited damage to major cereals and soybean but threatens other crops, rangelands and horticulture not only on the Horn of Africa, but on the on the Arabian Peninsula, and South Asia as well.
- Production prediction: Favorable production is forecast for major cereal (maize, rice, wheat) and soybean in the southern Hemisphere and tropical and sub-tropical countries.
- China：Weather conditions were favorable for the establishment of the wheat crop. Above average temperature advanced the crop progress compared with the previous years.
Introduction
This CropWatch bulletin summarizes global crop condition developments and agroclimatic factors from October 1st,2019 to January 31st, 2020 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 42 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 2020 (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 forty three 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
