The purpose of a produce tracker is to be able to identify agriculture hotspots that might be damaging to the environment. When we pick a produce in a supermarket, we have very little idea how far it has traveled much less whether it is an outcome of deforestation or pollution or unsustainable practices. There are only fragmented information on country-produce environmental issues. But a comprehensive tool that provides a global trade of produce is largely absent.
Such a global data can be found at one site. Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations, gathers and publishes various agriculture data at faostat.org. There is a simple visualization tool and the data can be downloaded. However, to produce a comprehensive view, the data needs to be prepared and merged of crop metrics - production, import and export quantities against country and year.
The first version of this tool used the production as well as trade(export and import) data by country by crop by year. It is important to visualize all these three metrics side by side for useful analysis. This will help in giving a breakthrough for further investigation. Some scenarios to look for are - high export of a produce (investigate trade, monopoly, deforestation), unusually high import of one or two produce (trade imbalance), impact on a produce-country of trade policies (soy export of US to China due to tariffs - which country is likely to increase production of soy to meet the demand).
The recommended analysis is to start with the Produce Analysis tab and click on View by produce.
Note: The visualization updates dynamically as you select the view options.
This first analysis will give the information on country of interest based on the produce. For example, you might start with understanding top coffee exporters and want to further explore a country of interest.
Note: The visualization updates dynamically as you select the view options.
This helps in understanding what else is produced (or exported or imported) in that country.
Once you have narrowed a produce and a country of interest then go to the Time Analysis tab. You can see how the produce in that country trended over time.
The agricultural practices behind the abundance of pineapple trade expose deforestation of land that is cleared to make way for more pineapple crops and unethical treatment of workers who handpick pineapples under the hot sun.
Last updated on September 24, 2019.