Evidence for Resilient Agriculture Dataset v1.0.1

The Evidence for Resilient Agriculture (ERA v1.0.1) dataset contains112,859 observations from 2,011 agricultural studies conducted in Africa from 1934 to 2018. ERA examines the efficacy of 363 practice combinations on 87 environmental, social, and agricultural-economic outcome indicators. Observations are geolocated and can be linked to opensource environmental, economic, and social data to investigate the interaction of local context on performance indicators. ERA offers a new resource for evaluating the impact of changing farming practices, providing foundational evidence for designing policies, programs, and investments to support African agricultural development.

Here we provide the foundation materials for using the ERA dataset. Data include:
1. ERA_Compiled.csv = the ERA dataset in wide format
2. ERA_Compiled_Fields.csv = description of the fields in ERA_compiled.csv
3. ERA_Bibliography.csv = ERA bibliographic data
4. ERA_Search_Terms.csv = keyword search terms used to query citation databases to discover relevant scientific literature for ERA
5. Practice_Codes.csv = definitions and hierarchy of the practices used in the ERA dataset
6. Outcome_Codes.csv = definitions and hierarchy of the outcomes used in the ERA dataset
7. EU_Codes.csv = definitions and hierarchy of the products used in the ERA dataset

We have created packages called ERAg and ERAgON for using ERA in the R programming environment. We have included vignettes from these packages here to demonstrate the capabilities available:
• ERA-Introduction.pdf
• ERA-Explore-and-Analyze.pdf
• ERA-Search-Protocols.pdf
• ERA-Yield-Stability.pdf

ERA v1 is being released based on support from the CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy Initiative and complimentary support from the Livestock and Climate Initiative for the livestock data. Earlier efforts toward ERA’s development received financial support from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) Flagship Program on Practices and Technologies. Supplemental funding was provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), European Union (EU), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), United States Department of Agriculture-Foreign Agricultural Service (USDA-FAS), CCAFS Flagship Program on Low Emissions Development, and the International Centre for Forestry Research (CIFOR)’s Evidence-Based Forestry.
Metodology:The Evidence Review for Agriculture (ERA) dataset was developed using a comprehensive search and screening strategy. The initial search queried the Web of Science and Scopus Databases for English language articles published between 1948 and 2013. The search terms included key words related to technology, outcome, and geographic location. Articles were excluded if they did not meet specific criteria, such as including data on at least one technology and one outcome of interest, being conducted in a low- or middle-income country, or reporting primary data.

The ERA dataset was further refined through a recursive search and a 2019 update. The recursive search focused on studies conducted within Africa, while the 2019 update added new publications from African countries for the years 2013 to 2018. These additions brought the total number of studies in the ERA dataset to 2,011.

The ERA dataset includes a wide range of data, including bibliographic information, geographic location, environmental context, experimental design, treatment comparisons, and outcomes. The data were extracted from tables, text, and figures, and each row of the dataset has a unique ID that represents a unique combination of article, site, treatment comparison, commodity, outcome measure, and period of time.

A detailed methodology can be found in the associated ERA Dataset Descriptor.