Massive dataset maps when African farmers plant and harvest crops
Waha K, Rötzer S, De Vos K, Grewer U, Tomes A
Phenology
If you've ever wondered how researchers track whether growing seasons are shifting with the climate, this dataset is the kind of ground-truth record, tied to real fields and real harvest dates, that makes those answers possible.
Scientists gathered years of farm survey answers from six African countries, where households reported exactly when they planted and harvested hundreds of different crops. They cleaned up the messy, inconsistent records and added location tags to each field, so now anyone can match crop timing to soil type, weather patterns, or satellite imagery. It's basically a giant, organized notebook of real growing seasons that other researchers can use to spot how farming is changing over time.
Key Findings
Dataset covers crop planting and harvesting dates from six African countries between 2009 and 2019
Collected through the LSMS-ISA household survey program, spanning several hundred crop types
Includes anonymized geographic field locations, enabling linkage to climate, soil, and Earth observation datasets
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers compiled and cleaned a decade of farm survey data on planting and harvest dates for hundreds of crops across six African countries, creating a public dataset that links crop calendars to specific locations, soil, and climate data.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
African Crop Calendar: A geo-referenced dataset of crop growing seasons across diverse agro-ecological regions.
Large-scale agricultural household surveys provide essential data on farming households' socioeconomics, land management, and agricultural indicators, and allow detailed micro-scale comparisons whi...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Climate adaptation in plants refers to the physiological and evolutionary mechanisms through which plants adjust to changing environmental conditions, including temperature shifts, altered precipitation patterns, and seasonal variations. Understanding these processes is essential for plant science
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