Every meal has a story: beginning from the soil, moving through farms and trade, and eventually returning to the earth. Food From Soil to Soil shows that full journey with a focus of learning how food is grown, traded, lost, and shared.
The idea is simple: food starts in soil, travels through systems shaped by people and policy, and then disposed. Explore the visuals to follow the journey and discover the importance of building a more fair and sustainable food system.
Circle size represents the magnitude of food production for the selected crop and year.
Use the product dropdown to explore different foods, click Play to animate production from 1961–2021,
and click any country circle to view country-specific production statistics.
This map shows how much of specific crops each country produces, focusing on five major food items in the dataset. Understanding these production patterns is essential because they reveal which countries generate surplus for certain crops and which may face consistent shortages. These differences directly shape global food trade: high-production countries become key exporters for those crops, while lower-production regions rely more heavily on imports. Seeing where each crop is grown provides the foundation for interpreting the trade flows explored in the next visualization.
This interactive chord diagram shows import and export flows between selected countries
for a chosen food item and year.
Use the controls on the left to switch between imports and exports, change the product and year,
and filter which countries are displayed. Click any ribbon in the diagram to view detailed
statistics about that specific trade flow below.
This visualization highlights the flow of food between countries for the selected crop and year, revealing who sends what to whom. Trade relationships form a global network where some countries act as major suppliers while others depend heavily on imports to meet demand. By tracing these directional flows, we can identify where production imbalances are being corrected through international exchange and where they are not. When paired with the food waste data, these trade patterns expose critical gaps: even as millions of metric tonnes move across borders, inefficiencies in transportation, storage, and distribution contribute to significant losses along the supply chain. Understanding these links between trade, production, and waste helps show how food can be abundant on a global scale yet still fail to reach the people who need it most.
Select a year to view food loss data and hover over a country to see its loss percentage and related details.
This map represents the global patterns of food waste over time, emphasizing which countries lose a significant portion of their food supply and which manage to minimize loss.
It uses the scale of percentage of food lost per country, where the loss percentage represents the portion of food produced that is wasted, spoiled in the stages of drying, storing, harvesting, transportation, consumption, etc. Darker red shades indicate higher food loss, while green shades indicate lower loss, helping to highlight regional disparities in food waste.
Understanding food loss is critical because it impacts food security, resource use, and environmental sustainability. High food loss means wasted labor, water, and energy, and contributes to unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.
Understanding food’s full journey reveals more than just how it moves: it shows how deeply people, ecosystems, and economies depend on one another. When we look at production, trade, and waste together, the bigger picture becomes clear: every stage affects the next.
When one part of the cycle falters: whether through low yields, disrupted trade, or high loss, the effects ripple outward. Prices shift, access changes, and entire communities can feel the impact. Seeing these connections helps highlight how fragile the system can be, but also how much power we have to improve it.
By tracing food from soil to soil, we can better understand where resources are strained, where inequalities emerge, and where solutions can make the greatest difference. Recognizing these links is the first step toward building a food system that is more resilient, more equitable, and more sustainable for everyone.
Each dot is a country. The x-axis shows total production (log scale),
the y-axis shows average food loss in recent years.
Hover a dot to see the country name and details, and click to view
a summary on the right.
Use the dropdowns to choose a statistic and a year. The bar chart shows countries ordered from least to greatest value. Click a bar to see that country's values across all years in the dataset in the chart below.
This visualization highlights key indicators of food insecurity, showing how different countries experience conditions such as child malnutrition, undernourishment, and low birthweight. Unlike production or trade data, these metrics reveal the human outcomes of food system disparities rather than the supply of food itself. Tracking patterns across countries and over time helps identify regions where access to nutritious food remains unstable, and where vulnerable populations may be at greatest risk.
Understanding these insecurity trends is vital because they move the discussion beyond how much food is grown or traded to who actually receives adequate nutrition. High production does not necessarily guarantee that communities are well-fed, especially when economic, social, or political barriers limit access to food. By comparing insecurity indicators alongside production and trade flows, we see where the global food system succeeds in meeting human needs and where it falls short.