There’s a new version of the high-resolution global crop production dataset known as SPAM, using 2010 data. This is the third iteration, and we’ve blogged about previous versions before. Here’s what rainfed smallholder peanut area looks like in India, with germplasm from Genesys on top of it for good measure.
Might as well point to a few other spatial resources which have recently become available since I’m at it:
The Harlan III symposium, dedicated to the Origins of Agriculture and the Domestication, Evolution, and Utilization of Genetic Resources, and initially planned for 2018, is now scheduled for 3-7 June 2019. The call for abstracts and registration are open. Thanks to Anne-Céline Thuillet, on behalf of the organizing committee, for letting us know.
A paper just out in Quaternary Science Reviews provides an overview of the first 3000 years of the spread of cultivated cereals around Eurasia, based on archaeobotanical evidence. The paper has some nice maps, but the press release has a really cool animated gif, which I had no hesitation in stealing.
Before 5000 BCE: farming communities used foothill, alluvial and catchment locations in different parts of Eurasia.
Between 5000-2500 BCE: crops move around, but remain ecologically constrained, with the Tibetan Plateau and the Asian monsoons separating east from west, and north from south.
Between 2500-1500 BCE: crops are taken to new thermal and hydrologic contexts, bringing previously isolated agricultural systems together.
The title of that press release says it all really: “A small number of crops are dominating globally. And that’s bad news for sustainable agriculture.” Compare and contrast with the findings of Colin Khoury and friends from a couple of years back on the increasing homogeneity of global diets. Basically looking at the same data in a somewhat different way: pretty much the same result.
