This raster dataset depicts the average fractional proportion of a gridcell for oilseed plant crops (not specified elsewhere) that were harvested circa 2000. Croplands cover ~15 million km2 of the planet and provide the bulk of the food and fiber essential to human well-being. Most global land cover datasets from satelites group croplands into just a few categories, thereby excluding information that is critical for answering key questions ranging from biodiversity conservation to food security to biogeochemical cycling. Information about agricultural land use practices like crop selection, yield, and fertilizer use is even more limited.Here we present land use data sets created by combining national, state, and county level census statistics with a recently updated global data set of croplands on a 5 minute by 5 minute (~10km x 10 km) latitude/longitude grid. Temporal resolution: Year 2000- based of average of census data between 1997-2003. EarthStat.org serves geographic data sets with the purpose of solving the grand challenge of feeding a growing global population while reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment. The data sets on EarthStat allow users to map the distribution of crops globally, analyze the impact of climate change on crop yields, understand the impacts of fertilizer and manure use and much more.
