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Data Sources

AAFC Annual Crop Inventory: Five-Year Crop History

The AAFC Annual Crop Inventory is the satellite-derived crop map of Canada. Township Canada turns it into a five-year rotation, dominant crop, and diversity index per quarter section.

What it is

The AAFC Annual Crop Inventory (ACI) is Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's satellite-derived crop classification, published every year as a 30-metre raster covering the prior growing season. Township Canada samples it per quarter section and builds a five-year rotation from the most recent classifications.

What it carries

For each quarter section we derive the dominant crop, the rotation pattern across the last five years, and a Shannon crop-diversity index that rewards a varied rotation over a persistent monoculture. The same colour table AAFC publishes is used on our map, so the visual matches what producers already know from the AAFC viewer.

Coverage and refresh

We carry crop history on more than 1.7 million Prairie quarter sections across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, refreshed annually in January for the prior season.

Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada. Source: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada - Annual Crop Inventory.

How Township Canada shows it

The ACI powers the AAFC Crops map layer (Agriculture Bundle) and the crop-history strip on the Agriculture tab of the parcel report. The diversity index is also one of the four inputs to the Productivity Score.

Screenshot to add (/images/learn/data-sources/aafc-crop-inventory/crop-history-card.png): the Agriculture tab crop-history strip showing a five-year rotation (for example peas, spring wheat, lentils) with the dominant crop and diversity index.