Cropland area database by country circa 2020

This dataset describes a new estimate of cropland area circa the year 2020, with global coverage, with data for 221 countries and territories and 34 regional aggregates. Data are generated from geospatial information on the agreement-disagreement characteristics of six open access high-resolution cropland maps derived from remote sensing (ESRI LU/LC, FROM-GLC Plus, GLAD, GLC-FCS30, Globeland30 and Worldcover). This cropland area mapping (CAM) dataset provides information on: i) mean cropland area and its uncertainty; ii) cropland area by six distinct cropland agreement classes; and iii) cropland area by specific combinations of underlying land cover product.

The file contains data on the mean cropland area obtained from 6 high resolution cropland layers and the corresponding standard error and the area for six simple cropland agreement classes are reported. Cropland area from the 6 high resolution land cover layers. And area of detailed agreement classes describing the cropland area for each combination of the land cover layers.

For additional information a lookup table is included for the detailed agreement data, here you find an overview of the corresponding land cover layers that map cropland for each detailed agreement class.

This dataset was generated from the cropland agreement map (Tubiello, 2022), previously used to estimate cropland areas across the world (Tubiello, 2023). The data was further used in an analysis of global cropland area in comparison with FAOSTAT cropland data.

Tubiello, Francesco N., Conchedda, Giulia, Casse, Leon, Hao, Pengyu, Chen, Zhongxin, De Santis, Giorgia, Fritz, Steffen, & Muchoney, Douglas. (2022). High resolution cropland agreement map (30 m) circa 2020 (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7244124

Tubiello, F.N., Conchedda, G., Casse, L. et al. Measuring the world’s cropland area. Nat Food 4, 30–32 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00667-9