As part of the the World Bank's review of its rural development strategy, the Bank sought the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in evaluating how farming systems might change and adapt over the next thirty years. Amongst other objectives, the World Bank asked FAO to provide guidance on priorities for investment in food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth, and in particular to identify promising approaches and technologies that will contribute to these goals. The results of the study are summarized in a set of seven documents, comprising six regional reports and the global overview contained in this volume. This document, which synthesises the results of the six regional analyses as well as discussing global trends, cross-cutting issues and possible implementation modalities, presents an overview of the complete study. This document is supplemented by two case study reports of development issues of importance to farming systems globally.

Derived from the Global Agro-Ecological Zones Study, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Land and Water Development Division (AGL) with the collaboration of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), 2000. Data averaged over a period of 37 years. Raster data-set has been exported as ASCII raster file type.

As part of the the World Bank's review of its rural development strategy, the Bank sought the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in evaluating how farming systems might change and adapt over the next thirty years. Amongst other objectives, the World Bank asked FAO to provide guidance on priorities for investment in food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth, and in particular to identify promising approaches and technologies that will contribute to these goals. The results of the study are summarized in a set of seven documents, comprising six regional reports and the global overview contained in this volume. This document, which synthesises the results of the six regional analyses as well as discussing global trends, cross-cutting issues and possible implementation modalities, presents an overview of the complete study. This document is supplemented by two case study reports of development issues of importance to farming systems globally.

As part of the the World Bank's review of its rural development strategy, the Bank sought the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in evaluating how farming systems might change and adapt over the next thirty years. Amongst other objectives, the World Bank asked FAO to provide guidance on priorities for investment in food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth, and in particular to identify promising approaches and technologies that will contribute to these goals. The results of the study are summarized in a set of seven documents, comprising six regional reports and the global overview contained in this volume. This document, which synthesises the results of the six regional analyses as well as discussing global trends, cross-cutting issues and possible implementation modalities, presents an overview of the complete study. This document is supplemented by two case study reports of development issues of importance to farming systems globally.

Grid with estimated yearly reference evapotranspiration with a spatial resolution of 10 arc minutes. The dataset contains average values for global land areas, excluding Antarctica, for the period 1961-1990. The dataset has been prepared according to the FAO Penman - Monteith method with limited climatic data as described in FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56. The dataset consists one ASCII-grid with yearly data in mm/year. ASCII-grids with mean monthly data in mm/day * 10 are also available as described in the associated resources of this metadata.

As part of the the World Bank's review of its rural development strategy, the Bank sought the assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in evaluating how farming systems might change and adapt over the next thirty years. Amongst other objectives, the World Bank asked FAO to provide guidance on priorities for investment in food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth, and in particular to identify promising approaches and technologies that will contribute to these goals. The results of the study are summarized in a set of seven documents, comprising six regional reports and the global overview contained in this volume. This document, which synthesises the results of the six regional analyses as well as discussing global trends, cross-cutting issues and possible implementation modalities, presents an overview of the complete study. This document is supplemented by two case study reports of development issues of importance to farming systems globally.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the collaboration of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), has developed a system that enables rational land-use planning on the basis of an inventory of land resources and evaluation of biophysical limitations and potentials. This is referred to as the Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology.

Grid with estimated reference evapotranspiration per month with a spatial resolution of 10 arc minutes. The dataset contains mean monthly values for global land areas, excluding Antarctica, for the period 1961-1990. The dataset has been prepared according to the FAO Penman - Monteith method with limited climatic data as described in FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56. The dataset consists of 12 ASCII-grids with mean monthly data in mm/day * 10, and one ASCII-grid with yearly data in mm/year.

A general characterization of moisture conditions is achieved through the concept of length of growing period (LGP), i.e. the period during the year when both moisture availability and temperature are conducive to crop growth. Thus, in a formal sense, LGP refers to the number of days within the period of temperatures above 5°C when moisture conditions are considered adequate. Under rain-fed conditions, the begin of the LGP is linked to the start of the rainy season. For establishing crops, 0.4 - 0.5 times the level of reference evapotranspiration is considered sufficient to meet water requirements of dryland crops (FAO 1978-81a; 1979; 1992a). This layer is a result of the Agro-ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology for land productivity assessments and is part of the Global Agro-ecological Zoning Database.

The FGGD CV of LGP map is a global raster datalayer with a resolution of 5 arc-minutes. Each pixel contains an average coefficient of variation of LGP for the pixel area over the period 1901-1966. The data are from FAO and IIASA, 2000, Global agro-ecological zones, as reported in FAO and IIASA, 2007, Mapping biophysical factors that influence agricultural production and rural vulnerability, by H. von Velthuizen et al.