Agricultural production is defined as crop production per land area and is an important indicator of food availability and ecosystem health. It is dependent on fertile land, yield, economic factors, and consumption patterns. Lower production indicates poorer ecosystem condition. Key factors that determine actual crop yields include a crop's genetic potential, sunlight, water, nutrients, and presence of weeds and pests. Crop production is measured in tons per hectare.

1. Agricultural Production
Agricultural production is defined as crop production per land area. Agricultural production is an important
indicator of food availability and ecosystem health. Lower production indicates poor ecosystem condition.
Agricultural or crop production is dependent on the availability of fertile land and is a function of yield,
macroeconomic uncertainty, as well as consumption patterns. It affects agricultural products’ price as well as
food security. The importance of agricultural production is related to harvested areas, returns per hectare
(yields), and quantities produced. Crop yields are the harvested production per unit of harvested area for crop
products. The actual yield from the farm depends on several factors, such as the crop's genetic potential, the
amount of sunlight, water and nutrients absorbed by the crop, and the presence of weeds and pests. Crop
production is measured in tons per hectare.
Methodology
Crop type map or a detailed land use map is an important input for presenting agricultural production spatially.
Crop types vary in location and time. National LULC maps generally have major crop classes like rice, wheat,
orchard etc. However, many countries do not have detailed crop-type maps. In such cases, an application like
Google Earth Engine can be used to produce crop maps using satellite images such as Sentinel 2 imageries or
higher resolution optical imageries, complemented by field works. Different techniques, such as time series
analysis, phenological analysis, machine learning etc. can be applied to produce detailed crop type maps or land
use maps. The resolution and accuracy depend on the ground truth data and the quality of the images.
Depending on the crop type map resolution, the productivity of the main crop species can be estimated. Input
data of crop production per harvested area might be obtained from the national statistical office, or for some
common crops such as rice or maize, country-specific crop productivity data from OECD
(https://data.oecd.org/agroutput/crop-production.htm.) can be considered. Country-specific crop production
data can be downloaded and visualized from the FAOSTAT (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL)
as well. However, for local-level representation, a detailed crop type map along with productivity or yield rate
is mandatory.
If the yield rate is available, then the yield rate of specific crops can be multiplied by the area of respective
crops, which can be obtained from a land use map to show the total agricultural production in hectares or
square kilometers. Table 2 shows the input data required for estimating agricultural production. Locally available
yield data are preferable, but in the lack of local data, secondary sources such as FAOSTAT can be used.
Table 1: Input data table for agricultural production
Variable Dataset
Crop type map or detailed land use map National LULC map (preferred)
Productivity or yield rate Statistical offices (preferred)
FAOSTAT
OECD