The current CropWatch bulletin describes world-wide crop condition and food production as appraised by data up to the end of October 2020. It is prepared by an international team coordinated by the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Special attention is paid to the major producers of maize, rice, wheat and soybean throughout the bulletin. The assessment is based mainly on remotely sensed data. It covers prevailing weather conditions, including extreme factors, at different spatial scales, starting with global patterns in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 focuses on agro-climatic and agronomic conditions in major production zones in all continents. Chapter 3 covers the major agricultural countries that, together, make up at least 80% of production and exports. Each is the object of a detailed analysis. Chapter 3 constitutes the bulk of the Bulletin. Chapter 4 zooms into China. The bulletin also presents this year’s third CropWatch production estimates for selected countries and reviews the first production estimation in chapter 5.

This report for the period from July to October 2020 covers wheat, maize, soybean and rice production in the Northern Hemisphere. Winter wheat reached maturity in June/July. The harvest of the summer crops (spring wheat, maize, rice and soybean) started in August and was mostly finished by the end of October. In the southern hemisphere, wheat is the only major crop that was grown during this monitoring period. It reaches maturity in October (Southern Brazil) or in November and December  (Argentina, South Africa and Australia).

So far, the outbreak of COVID-19 has had limited impact on the production of the major crops. As this, and other reports, show, production levels of the major staple crops, such as maize, rice, wheat and soybean remained high and also benefitted from generally favorable weather conditions. However, disruptions in the domestic food supply chains, price hikes, loss of remittances and income have mostly hurt the people who were already poor. Before the pandemic outbreak covered the entire globe, 690 million people were already chronically and 135 million were acutely food insecure.  The U.N. World Food Programme has warned  that an additional 130 million could face acute food insecurity by the end of 2020.

Another plague, the outbreak of desert locusts in East Africa, Middle East and southwest Asia is still not under control either. According to the FAO, the situation remains alarming in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, a region where millions of people already face acute food insecurity.

Agro-climatic conditions

According to the analyses presented in Chapters 1 and 3.1, prevailing climate conditions during the current 2020 JASO reporting period were close to normal for cropland. Average temperatures, rainfall and photosynthetically active solar radiation stayed close to the 15-year average. No prolonged heat wave in any of the major production countries was observed during this period.

At the global scale, the series of record or close to record high temperatures continued throughout this monitoring period: July and August ranked as 2nd, September as 1st and October as the 4th warmest respective months in past 141 years. For the months from January to October, this was the second warmest period on record. The temperature departure was +1.0°C  above the 20th century average.

Overall, the prospects for crop production were quite favorable, mainly because no prolonged, large scale droughts were observed. In many regions, the crops benefitted from the above average rainfall that had been recorded for the previous monitoring period. The stored soil moisture helped sustain crop growth, even when precipitation was below average. Below average rainfall was recorded for Central and South America (-14%) and North America (-11%), mainly in the Western USA. Conditions were drier than usual in Europe as well (-6%). Above average rainfall was recorded for Central Asia (+20%) and East Asia (+19%). The latter started this monitoring period under drought conditions, but a series of typhoons and tropical depression brought large amounts of rainfall to that region. Conditions turned back to normal in Oceania as well, where rainfall was 8% above average.

The following is a summary of the conditions in the key production regions:

·North America: Production conditions were generally favorable for maize and soybean. Harvest benefitted from slightly drier than usual conditions. US maize (+2%), rice (+2%) and soybean (+2%) production is estimated to increase. A reduction by 3 % is expected for wheat. In Canada, soybean production remained at the same level as last year, whereas wheat increased by +5%.

·South America: Wheat production in Brazil was favorable (+3%), but Argentina suffered from drought conditions (-16%). A delay in the onset of the summer rains delayed sowing of maize and soybean in Brazil. La Niña may cause further rainfall deficits in Brazil and Argentina in the coming months.

·Europe: Rainfall was generally on the dry side. Production of summer crops was slightly below normal.

·Africa: Abundant rainfall benefitted the crops in the Horn of Africa and West Africa. Wheat in South Africa also benefitted from favorable weather conditions

· Eastern Europe to the Ural: Romania, the northern Caucasus and Volga regions of Russia, as well as the Ukraine suffered from a rainfall deficit which caused reduced yields of the summer crops.

· Siberia and Kazakhstan: benefited from above average rainfall and above average wheat yields were harvested in that region.

· China: It generally benefitted from abundant rainfall and production slightly increased over last year's levels: Maize production is estimated to increase by 0.8%, wheat by 2,9% and soybean by 0.9%. Rice production remained stable (-0.2%), despite of the heavy floods in the Yangtze river basin in early summer. The north-east was hit by 3 typhoons, causing wind damage and local floods affecting about 1 million ha of maize.

· South Asia: India, as well as Pakistan benefitted from favorable monsoon rains and rice production increased by more than 6% in both countries. Bangladesh, on the other hand, experienced severe floods and production is expected to decrease by 6%.

· South-East Asia: This region recovered from the drought conditions. Several typhoons, most of them hitting the area just after harvest of the main rice crops, brought plenty of rainfall to the region. Production is estimated at average levels.

 ·Australia: Especially the south-east recovered from last year's severe drought and a sharp increase by 8.57 million tons (+44.3%) from 2019 is estimated for wheat.

In 2020, global maize production is expected to be at 1.070 billion tons, an increase of 1.4% or equivalent to 15.15 million tons; global rice production is expected to be 760 million tons at an increase of 0.9% or an increase of 6.80 million tons; global wheat production is 738 million tons, an 3.1% increase of 21.98 million tons; global soybean production is expected to be 323 million tons, a slight decrease of 0.2%. In 2020, the global production of the major cereals and oil crops will be generally stable.