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Measuring the world’s cropland area

Nature Food volume 4, pages 30–32 (2023)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 19 January 2023

Matters Arising to this article was published on 05 January 2023

The Original Article was published on 23 December 2021

This article has been updated

arising from: P. Potapov et al. Nature Food (2022) https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00429-z

Measurements of cropland extent are increasingly more precise and accurate thanks to enormous progress in Earth observations, machine learning and computing power, complemented by sophisticated validation and sampling techniques. The first set of globally consistent, multidecadal, high-resolution cropland maps introduced in Nature Food1 is a testament to such progress, as it adds a much-needed temporal dimension to previously available static maps, and opens the possibility for more nuanced comparisons with established Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) land use statistics2,3. These recent advances hold the promise to rapidly improve our ability to monitor the sustainability of agriculture at all scales and in real time. Yet, we find that current knowledge based on the available high-resolution maps still lacks the expected precision, so much so that the world cropland area around the year 2020 is currently known only within a range of 1,100–1,900 Mha, and estimates of recent cropland expansion rates are even more uncertain (2–10% for the period 2000–2020). We argue that an important and often overlooked driver of current uncertainties is the use of different land use definitions across products.

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Fig. 1: Trends in world total cropland area.

Change history

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy

    Francesco N. Tubiello, Giulia Conchedda, Leon Casse & Giorgia De Santis

  2. Digitization and Informatics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy

    Hao Pengyu & Chen Zhongxin

  3. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Steffen Fritz

  4. Geospatial Unit, Land and Water Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy

    Douglas Muchoney

Authors
  1. Francesco N. Tubiello
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  2. Giulia Conchedda
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  3. Leon Casse
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  4. Hao Pengyu
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  5. Chen Zhongxin
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  6. Giorgia De Santis
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  7. Steffen Fritz
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  8. Douglas Muchoney
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Contributions

F.N.T. and G.C. drafted the manuscript and analysed the country-level data. P.H. and L.C. carried out the underlying geospatial analysis and subsequent aggregations. All the authors provided critical revision of the manuscript, provided final approval of the published version and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work. At the same time, the views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the FAO and IIASA.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesco N. Tubiello.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Food thanks Shuai Wang, Qiangyi Yu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Cropland agreement map.

Cropland agreement map. Pixel-level results from six high-resolution cropland maps (see Supplementary Information for single product details). Available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7244123.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Cropland area by region.

Cropland area by region. Regional bars represent mean cropland area circa 2020, from six high-resolution cropland maps, together with 95% confidence intervals. Black diamonds represent FAO arable land in 2020.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Regional cropland results.

Regionally aggregated results of cropland area agreement/disagreement for the six high-resolution maps.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Table 1 and references.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical Source Data to generate Fig. 1.

Source Data Table 1

Statistical Source Data to generate Table 1.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Geotiff source data used to generate Extended Data Fig. 1. Map was prepared in ArcGIS PRO.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Statistical Source Data to generate Extended Data Figure 2. Figure was prepared in R and pptx.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Statistical Source Data to generate Extended Data Fig. 3

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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

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