SPAM 2020: Global Crop Production Estimates at 5-Minute Grid Resolution

IFPRI's 2020 Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM) provides global estimates of crop area, yield, and production on a 5-minute grid. The model, developed by Zhe Guo, Shuang Zhou, and Liangzhi You, uses a cross-entropy method to disaggregate national and sub-national statistics into plausible spatial distributions. This grid-scape reveals where geography intersects with agricultural production systems to inform policy.

Use Cases

• Modeling the spatial distribution of crop production based on the described 5-minute grid estimates.
• Analyzing potential impacts of agricultural policies on food security using the disaggregated production statistics.
• Targeting development investments by identifying geographic patterns of crop performance mentioned in the description.
• Integrating spatially-explicit crop data with environmental models to assess sustainability trade-offs.

Strengths

• Provides three key agricultural metrics—crop area, yield, and production—for a global analysis.
• Offers data at a 5-minute grid resolution, enabling detailed spatial analysis.
• Produced by the authoritative International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
• Uses a cross-entropy modeling method to generate plausible estimates from aggregated statistics.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Data is modeled estimates, not direct observations, which may introduce uncertainty.

Provenance

Source

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) HarvestChoice

Collection Method

Generated using the Spatial Production Allocation Model (SPAM) and a cross-entropy method to disaggregate country and sub-national statistics.

Time Range

2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-04 13:30:18; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global