Spatially explicit dataset on crop status of 262 farm plots in Tigray (24-29 August 2022)

Since late 2020, one of the worst wars has been raging in Tigray, Ethiopia's northernmost region. A humanitarian tragedy has been caused by the fighting (Dedefo Bedaso 2021; Annys et al. 2021). Intense fighting occurred throughout the whole region, and looting and damage were rampant. Farmers were harvesting their crops in the middle of a desert locust infestation when the conflict began in late 2020. To record war impacts, commonly, direct expenses or losses at a particular period are quantified (Lindgren 2004). Post-conflict damage assessments typically concentrate on losses to businesses, services, infrastructure, and facilities in cities, even though the primary source of income in developing countries is the agricultural sector. Even when agricultural evaluations are done, they mostly focus on crop losses and ignore how wars affect land management. In Tigray's small-scale family farms, which use a permanent farming system based on cereals, oxen are utilized for traction (Westphal 1975). Crop agriculture has been practiced in Tigray for at least three thousand years (D'Andrea 2008; Blond et al. 2018), allowing for the gradual improvement of the agricultural system, including considerable farmers' understanding of the procedures involved in seed selection and of land suitability (Fetien Abay et al. 2008). The indigenous knowledge (sensu Bruchac 2018) also includes a broad vocabulary for different soil types (Nyssen et al. 2019), and the capacity to interpret the rainy season when selecting the crop to be sown (Frankl et al. 2013). A significant degree of equality in the extent of landholdings has resulted from the strengthening of the egalitarian land tenure system during the 1980s (Hendrie 1999). In the study region, a typical household uses two or three farmland pieces totalling less than a hectare. The ownership and management of grasslands, rangelands, and woodlands are communal (Nyssen et al. 2008). In the first half of 2021, armed forces of the Ethiopian government and from Eritrea as well as from the neighboring Amhara region were engaged in warfare against the forces of Tigray's regional government; in the second half of the year, warfare was essentially outside of Tigray, more to the south, while Tigray itself was submitted to a blockade with all telecommunication and lifelines to the outside world cut (Pellet 2021; Gayim 2021; Ramos 2021), a blockade that continued into 2022. The near-absence of economic activities, combined with limited food stocks and restricted humanitarian access resulted in 70% of the population experiencing starvation (sensu Stratton et al. 2003), i.e. high levels of acute food insecurity and excess mortality (Plaut 2021; Istratii 2021; Teklehaymanot G Weldemichel 2021; Oxford Analytica 2021; Devi 2021; Müller and Read 2021). The famine was worst from September to December 2021, as it took up to December before the years' poor harvest could be consumed REF; the lean period (also called “lean season”, “hunger season”) has been very severe. The lean season is the time in between finishing the last food that people had at hand and starting to consume the new harvest (Hirvonen et al. 2016). Farmers' main goals in these dire circumstances were to attempt to generate a better harvest in 2022 and, despite everything, to try and survive another year. We offer field data obtained by the end of August 2022, which were evaluated to determine the percentage of Tigray's land that was seeded on schedule, the types of crops sown, and the condition of these crops. Despite difficult living and travel conditions, the agricultural status in some of Tigray's reachable districts was examined for the 2022 growing season.