Food Production by Country

What the food production data shows

Food Production by Country compares 20 major agricultural producers on the four crops that dominate world grain and oilseed trade: rice, wheat, corn (maize) and soybeans, all in million tonnes (Mt). A Total column adds the four crops together, and an Arable column gives each country's arable land in million hectares (Mha). It is useful for geography and economics homework, for background on commodity news, or for seeing how specialised each country's farming is. In this dataset, for example, the United States grows 384 Mt of corn but only 6 Mt of rice, while Vietnam produces 27 Mt of rice from 7 Mha of arable land.

How to use it

1. Stay on By Country to see the ranking table, or switch to By Crop for top-five cards and a top-10 bar chart for each crop.
2. Use the crop buttons (All Crops, Rice, Wheat, Corn, Soybeans) to focus the table and the stacked chart on one crop. With a single crop selected, the other crop columns show a dash and the Total column shows that crop's figure.
3. Type in Search country or choose a continent to narrow the table, and click any column heading to sort; click it again to reverse the order.
4. In Country Comparison, tap two to five country chips to overlay their four crop volumes on a radar chart. China, India, the United States and Brazil start selected.

How the numbers are handled

The crop figures are stored in the page's JavaScript and the Total column is calculated in your browser as rice + wheat + corn + soybeans. Sorting, filtering and all charts run locally, and nothing you type is sent or saved. Charts are drawn with Chart.js 4.4.7, loaded from cdn.jsdelivr.net when the page opens.

The banner names the country with the largest four-crop total in this dataset (China, 578 Mt). That is not the same as the largest food producer overall, because vegetables, fruit, livestock, fish, sugar crops and other cereals are not counted. The radar chart plots raw tonnages on one shared scale, so a large corn or soybean harvest can make smaller rice or wheat volumes hard to see; hover over a point for the exact figure.

Data sources and limitations

The page states that its data is based on FAO statistics (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). No reference year is given, and the numbers are a static snapshot bundled with the page rather than a live FAO feed. Harvests swing with weather, prices and policy from one season to the next, so check the FAOSTAT database for the latest year before quoting a figure.

• Values are rounded to whole million tonnes, so a 0 means less than about half a million tonnes (or none), not necessarily zero production.
• Rice may be reported as paddy (unmilled) or milled rice depending on the source, which changes the tonnage noticeably; the page does not say which basis it uses.
• Arable land is not the same as the harvested area for these crops, and double cropping means one hectare can yield two harvests a year.
• Only 20 countries are listed, with a single African country (Nigeria), so the "top 10" charts are rankings within this list.

Frequently asked questions

Related tools

• CO2 Emissions by Country
• World Population Data
• Country Data Explorer
• Chart Maker