Crop

For other uses, see Crop (disambiguation).

Domesticated plants

Crops drying in a home in Punjab, Pakistan

A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydroponics. Crops may include macroscopic fungus (e.g. mushrooms) and marine macroalga (e.g. seaweed), some of which are grown in aquaculture.

Most crops are harvested as food for humans or fodder for livestock. Some crops are gathered from the wild often in a form of intensive gathering (e.g. ginseng, yohimbe, and eucommia).

Important non-food crops include horticulture, floriculture and industrial crops. Horticulture crops include plants used for other crops (e.g. fruit trees). Floriculture crops include bedding plants, houseplants, flowering garden and pot plants, cut cultivated greens, and cut flowers. Industrial crops are produced for clothing (fiber crops e.g. cotton), biofuel (energy crops, algae fuel), or medicine (medicinal plants).

Production

World production of crops by commodity group

World agricultural land by use, permanent meadows and pastures and cropland

The production of primary crops was 9.5 billion tonnes in 2021, 54% more than in 2000. Four crops account for about half of global primary crop production: sugar cane, maize, wheat and rice.

The global production of primary crops increased by 54% between 2000 and 2021, to 9.5 billiontonnes, which is 2% higher thanin 2020. This represents 3.3 billion tonnesmore than in 2000. With slightly less than one-third of the total, cereals were the main group of crops produced in 2021, followed by sugarcrops (22%), vegetables and oilcrops (12% each). Fruit, and roots and tubers each accounted for 9–10% of the total production. The increase in production is mostly attributable to a combination of factors; increased use of irrigation, pesticides and fertilizers, and to a lesser extent a larger cultivated area. Other factors such as better farming practices and the use of high-yield crops also play a role.

The value of primary crops production increased at a slightly higher pace in real terms as the quantities produced (57%), from USD 1.8 trillion in 2000 to USD 2.8 trillion in 2021. As with quantities produced, cereals accounted for the largest share in the total production value in 2021 (30%). Vegetables and fruit represented 19% and 17%, respectively, of the totalvalue in 2021, which is significantlyhigher than the shares in quantities.The shares of oil crops and rootsand tubers in the total value weresimilar to the shares in quantities.Sugar crops represented 4% of the total value: such a discrepancywith the share of the quantities produced is due to differencesin price compared to fruit and vegetables, and to the fact thatthe transformation into refined sugar is adding the most value.

Globally important crops

The importance of a crop varies greatly depending on the region. Globally, the following crops contribute most to human food supply (values of kcal/person/day for 2013 given in parentheses): rice (541 kcal), wheat (527 kcal), sugarcane and other sugar crops (200 kcal), maize (corn) (147 kcal), soybean oil (82 kcal), other vegetables (74 kcal), potatoes (64 kcal), palm oil (52 kcal), cassava (37 kcal), legume pulses (37 kcal), sunflower seed oil (35 kcal), rape and mustard oil (34 kcal), other fruits, (31 kcal), sorghum (28 kcal), millet (27 kcal), groundnuts (25 kcal), beans (23 kcal), sweet potatoes (22 kcal), bananas (21 kcal), various nuts (16 kcal), soybeans (14 kcal), cottonseed oil (13 kcal), groundnut oil (13 kcal), yams (13 kcal). Note that many of the globally apparently minor crops are regionally very important. For example, in Africa, roots & tubers dominate with 421 kcal/person/day, and sorghum and millet contribute 135 kcal and 90 kcal, respectively.

World production of crops, main commodities

In terms of produced weight, the following crops are the most important ones (global production in thousand metric tonnes):

Crop	2000	2013	2020
Sugarcane	1,256,380	1,877,110	1,870,246
Maize	592,479	1,016,740	1,171,332
Rice	599,355	745,710	1,264,410
Wheat	585,691	713,183	760,931
Potato	327,600	368,096	359,124

Methods of cropping and popular crops in the U.S.

There are various methods of cropping that are used in the agricultural industry, such as mono cropping, crop rotation, sequential cropping, and mixed intercropping. Each method of cropping have their purposes and possibly disadvantages to them as well. Himanshu Arora defines mono cropping as where a field only grows one specific crop year round. Mono Cropping has its disadvantages, according to Himanshu Arora, such as the risk of the soil losing its fertility. Following mono cropping, another method of cropping is relay cropping. According to the National Library of Medicine, relay cropping may solve a number of conflicts such as inefficient use of available resources, controversies in sowing time, fertilizer application, and soil degradation. The result coming from the use of relay cropping is higher crop output. In the United States, corn is the largest crop produced, and soybean follows in at second, according to the government of Alberta. Referring to a map given by the Government of Alberta, the most popular region to grow these popular crops are in the inner states of the U.S., it is where the crops are most successful in output.

See also

• Agriculture classification of crops

• General topics and economics
  • Cash crop
  • Food crop
  • Crop cultivation
  • Crop yield
  • Fruit trees
  • Industrial crop
  • Intensive crop farming
  • Intercropping
  • List of most valuable crops and livestock products
  • Multiple cropping
  • Neglected and underutilized crop
  • Permanent crop
  • Sharecropping
  • Staple food
  • Nursery plants
• Floriculture crops
• Guerrilla gardening
• Management practices
  • Cover crop
  • Crop destruction
  • Crop residue
  • Crop rotation
  • Crop weed
  • Kharif crops (crops specific to South Asia)
  • Nurse crop
  • Rabi crops (crops specific to South Asia)
• Genetic diversity
  • Crop diversity
  • Crop wild relative
  • Seed bank
• Origin
  • Neolithic founder crops

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023​, FAO, FAO.

Further reading

• Sleper, David A.; Poehlman, John M. (2006). Breeding Field Crops. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 9780813824284. Retrieved December 5, 2011.