Extent of Crop Cultivation in South Africa

Data on cropland was obtained from the global data set produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Data set was obtained as a raster image, and clipped to the boundaries of South Africa, before being converted to a vector layer. The FGGD land cover occurrence maps are global raster data layers with a resolution of 5 arc-minutes. Each pixel in each map contains a value representing the percentage of the area belonging to the land cover type concerned. The method is described in FAO and IIASA, 2007, Mapping biophysical factors that influence agricultural production and rural vulnerability, by H. von Velthuizen et al