The current CropWatch bulletin describes world-wide crop condition and food production as appraised by data up to the end of October 2023. It is prepared by an international team coordinated by the Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The assessment is based mainly on remotely sensed data. It covers prevailing agri-climatic conditions, including extreme factors, at different spatial scales, starting with global patterns in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 focuses on agroclimatic and agronomic conditions in major production zones in all continents. Chapter 3 covers the major agricultural countries that comprise at least 80% of production and exports (the "core countries") while chapter 4 zooms into China. Special attention is paid to the production outlook of main crop producing and exporting countries where major cereal and oil crops (maize, rice, wheat and soybean) are harvested this year or currently still in the field. Subsequent sections of Chapter 5 describe the global disasters that occurred from July to October 2023.

Agroclimatic conditions

During this monitoring period, new temperature records were observed. October, the last month of this monitoring period, was the fifth consecutive month of record-warm global temperatures. Despite of the warmer temperatures, crop losses were limited, mainly due to a change in precipitation patterns caused by the transition from La Niña to El Niño. One of the few regions affected by severe drought and extremely high temperatures was the Amazon basin and adjacent Mato Grosso in Brazil. Never in the 120 years since measurements of water levels of the Rio Negro at Manaus began, have water levels been that low. Deforestation, El Niño and climate change are the culprits. The current drought and heat wave are also impacting the sowing of the soybean crop in Mato Grosso.

Global crop production situation

Since 2021, the CPI has remained below 1.0 for three consecutive years, indicating that frequent extreme events caused by climate change have constrained stable increases in global and regional grain production. In 2023, the global CPI from July to October (0.972) is still at a lower level within the past 11 years, it has shown a slight improvement compared to the same period in 2022 (CPI=0.970).

Maize: Agroclimatic conditions have been favorable in most of the world's major maize exporting countries in 2023. CropWatch estimates that global maize production increases by 2.4% to 1,069 million tonnes.  The largest increases come from the three main producers: USA (+12.8 million tonnes), followed by Brazil (+9.4 million tonnes) and China (+5.6 million tonnes). After a mixed start of the growing season caused by low rainfall, conditions greatly inproved in the USA during this monitoring period. China's maize production increased by 2.4% due to the expansion of the maize cultivation area. Brazil experienced a decrease in the first-season maize and an expansion of planting areas for the second-season maize, boosting total maize production to reach 100.68 million tonnes. Compared to the extremely hot and dry conditions in 2022, Europe's important maize-producing countries generally enjoyed favorable weather conditions in 2023. Only Romania was affected by drought conditions. The sharpest decline was estimated for India, where flooding decreased the area and yield, leading to a decline in production by 9.1% to 17.1 million tonnes.

Rice: Most rice-producing countries experienced a slight decrease, resulting in global rice production of 753.41 million tonnes, which is 0.3% below last year’s level. As the world's largest rice producer, China is expected at 195.813 million tonnes, a slight increase of 0.2%, mainly due to the recovery from the last year's extremely high temperature and drought in the Yangtze River Basin, prompting an increase in production of mid- and late-stage rice. In India and Pakistan, a late onset of the monsoon season and irregular rainfall patterns caused brief periods of drought, but also flooding conditions, causing yield losses. However, in Pakistan, conditions were still better than last year, causing an increase in production by 11.8%. For most of Southeast Asia, slight yield reductions are estimated, with the exception of Cambodia (+5.4%). The United States (+5.7%) and Nigeria (+12.1%) also saw varying degrees of increased rice production. Overall, the global rice production remained stable.

Wheat: The production for major wheat-producing countries varied significantly. The total wheat production in the main producing countries was almost stable, but the total production of other countries has decreased by a large margin. The global wheat production in 2023 is estimated to be 732.84 million tonnes, down by 1.0%. It has been reduced for the third consecutive year and reached the lowest level in the past five years. Wheat in the Northern Hemisphere countries has been mainly harvested from June to September, and the production is in line with the August 2023 monitoring results. Overall, wheat production recovered in East Africa, while it decreased in many Central Asian countries. In the Southern Hemisphere, affected by lower rainfall, both wheat cultivated area and yields in Australia fell sharply, with production declining by 26.2%; on the contrary, agroclimatic conditions in the other wheat-producing regions were generally normal, leading to production increases in Brazil (+6.9%) and South Africa (+2.8%). Frequent rainfall during the harvest season caused some quality issues due to sprouting in Germany, Poland and Kazakhstan. Good rainfall in the winter wheat production regions of Europe and Asia in October helped with the germination and establishment of the new crop. 

Soybean: Global soybean production in 2023 is expected to be 318.13 million tonnes, a reduction of 0.6%. The southern hemisphere soybean production increased, but the difference between the production in Brazil and Argentina is stark. Soybean production in Argentina was significantly reduced by 18.9%, while Brazil increased by 12.1%, and the cumulative production of soybeans in the two countries increased by 1.71 million tonnes. The northern hemisphere soybean acreage declined, resulting in an overall reduction in soybean production. The United States witnessed favorable agro-climatic conditions during the soybean growth period, with suitable moisture and temperature contributing to favorable yields. However, due to the reduction in cultivated area, production decreased by 1.2%. China's soybean acreage shrinkage led to a 5.6% decrease in soybean production; India's and Canada's soybean production increased by 3.8% and 0.6%, respectively, while Russia's soybean production decreased slightly by 0.4%. The cumulative decrease of 2.82 million tonnes in soybean production in the Northern Hemisphere exceeded the increase in the Southern Hemisphere, resulting in a global soybean production decrease of 0.6%.

All in all, CropWatch estimates that the global production of maize, rice, wheat and soybean in 2023 will reach 2.874 billion tonnes, an increase of approximately 14.14 million tonnes or about 0.50%