Blog entries filtered by: Demographics, Farming

Mapping the global extent of soil constraints to crop growth plays an important role in developing strategies for agricultural production, environmental protection, and sustainable development at regional and global scales. The most widely used dataset is the Soil Fertility Capability Classification System (FCC) developed by Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

This surface divides sub-Saharan Africa into market sheds by measuring the nearest city or ‘market’ with a population of 20,000; 50,000; 100,000; 250,000; and 500,000 respectively. Nearness is determined by measuring the least accumulated ‘cost’ or travel time to each market center. The market shed is the total area surrounding each market for which that market has the lowest cost in terms of travel time. Travel time was estimated based on the combination of different spatial data layers, or variables, which affect the time required to travel across to the given points (i.e. cities). Market shed data can be used to determine the number of people or households that are more than likely dependent on a given market center (assuming that most people would travel to the closest market for their needs).

HarvestChoice relies heavily on large sets of household survey data to evaluate the economic impact of biophysical productivity responses at the farm level and on target populations.

Many of HarvestChoice’s spatial analyses are done using raster datasets at various spatial resolutions (e.g., 1 km, 10 km, or 50 km grids).