Executive summary

This bulletin presents a qualitative and quantitative assessment of worldwide food production. It is based on the independent analysis by the CropWatch team in the Chinese Academy of Sciences of environmental and agronomic indicators, most of them satellite-based, as well as other sources.  Maize, rice, wheat and soybean and major food producing countries, including China, receive special attention but other crops and areas are mentioned when required. The current reporting period from July to October 2015 mostly covers the planting of summer crops in the southern hemisphere, harvest of winter and summer crops in the northern hemisphere, and planting of winter crops. In many tropical and equatorial areas, the period includes the overlapping harvest of a first crop and the planting of the second.

After an overview of agroclimatic and agronomic conditions, which have largely been dominated by El Niño impacts (including areas of severe water stress in eastern and southern