FAO GAEZ v4 (FAO / IIASA)
Answers "what could grow here, and how far is actual production from potential?" — for every crop, globally.
What this is
FAO's Global Agro-Ecological Zones (GAEZ v4/v5) combines soil, climate, and terrain data to model crop suitability, attainable yield, and production gaps for a wide range of crops at ~10km. Available via the GAEZ Data Portal. License: CC-BY-4.0 (FAO default; confirm per-theme on the portal at ingest).
Why we surface it
Most ag data shows what is. GAEZ shows what's possible, and the gap between the two — where food security analysis lives.
What you can do with it
Shown for commercial use. Personal, research, and nonprofit use is often more permissive — switch the verdict lens on the catalog.
- Internal / individual use
- Free to use for any purpose, including commercial and AI training. Nothing's triggered until you share it.
- Redistribute the data
- Fine to use and redistribute, including commercially. One string attached: credit the original source wherever it shows up.
- Republish a derivative
- Build on it and republish freely, commercial or not. You must credit the original source in what you ship.
- Build into a private product
- Fine to build into a closed or commercial product. Attribution is still owed wherever the data is actually exposed to users.
This decoder is a starting point, not legal advice. For commercial deployment, run the actual license terms past someone who reads them for a living.
○ Planned
Not in the map yet — this source is on the V1 backlog. Schema, sample, and citation slots fill in once the layer ships.