Our approach
The Global Burden of Crop Loss initiative is pulling together data from around the world in order to answer the questions that matter.
The goal is to improve food security by supporting data-driven decision making in agriculture.
The methodological approach being developed to enable stakeholders to answer these questions will focus around three themes – crops and loss, burden, and attribution of loss. Crop loss estimates will be transformed into the economic value of the crops lost and the cost of control implemented, to avoid additional losses. The attribution of loss will outline the causes of losses.
The crops and loss theme will focus on determining how much crop yield is being lost at the global, regional or national scale. The process will identify where crops are being planted and how much is being harvested (actual yield).
Crop loss will be estimated as the “gap” between what was produced and what could have been produced based on localised limitations to crop growth due to climatic, geographic and socio-economic conditions (modelled yield on context).
The burden will be reported as the economic value associated with the amount of crops loss and the cost of control measures implemented to avoid further losses to pests through cash expenditure (e.g. purchase of crop protection products) and labour (e.g. weeding).
The attribution of losses will work top-down from the total crop loss envelope to ensure the amount attributed does not exceed 100% of losses.
Losses will be split across shock environmental events (e.g. floods) and pests. It is likely that the attribution of loss will initially focus on groups of pests (e.g. insects, diseases and weeds) rather than individual species.
GBCL will be developed on a crop-by-crop basis. Crop coverage will expand over time, depending on demand and funding. We are starting a focus on maize for the first iteration.
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