Question

What's the reported level of maize yield in Chad? Or, how about for all Sub-Saharan Countries? What's the time trend of groundnut yield in Ghana? Please be quick; you have one minute to find the answers! OK, good questions.

Questions

More often than not, we get same types of questions in this format: “What’s the (A) of (B) in (C)? Quick! I need to use it in the report I’m writing right away.”

  • A: Choose from [Area, Production, Value of Production, or Yield]
  • B: Choose from [Banana/Plantain, Barley, Dry Beans, Cassava, , Cowpea, Groundnut, Maize, Millet, Pigeonpea, Potato, Rice, Cotton, Sorghum, Soybean, Sugarbeet, Sugarcane, Sweet Potato, Vegetables, or Wheat]
  • C: Choose from [ (all the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa) or (country aggregates - like ASARECA, COMESA, etc) ]

Yes you can go to FAOSTAT yourself (if you have access and your login ID and password handy) and start querying around, but shouldn’t there be an easy way to get this simple piece of information quick?

Answer

Yes, sure it is – enter the HarverstChoice HappyStat (Harvest Area, Production, Value of Production, and Yield Statistics)  (click here). It’s a simple tiny web widget that dynamically/super-quickly answers to your questions on country-level agricultural statistics data.

In fact, the HappyStat has been always available at the (old) HarvestChoice main website. So, we felt it’s maybe worth posting here to start collecting your feedback. If you find it useful (or not), let us know (use the comment form below, or use the feedback form). We’ll use your suggestions/comments when we update it with newly available statistics data.

Notes

Make your choices in the top part (Show, Display, Where, Commodity), and you’ll see the results at the bottom automatically.

  • All the underlying statistics data was retrieved from FAOSTAT 2006. We plan to update with FAOSTAT 2010 in the first half of 2011.
  • Negative value (-9999) means no data available for the given year/commodity.
  • No, of course we don’t mind answering to your questions – like the one above – but wouldn’t it be nice if you can find the answers *yourself* even quicker? Besides, by exploring the database yourself, you may find something interesting for your research work.