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Scrape activity data from FAOSTAT and post-process it

Source: R/scrape_faostat.R
get_faostat_data.Rd

Important: Dynamically allows for the introduction of subsets as "...".

Note: overhead by individually scraping FAOSTAT code QCL for crop data; it's fine.

Data is downloaded straight from FAOSTAT's public bulk download service (https://bulks-faostat.fao.org), with no third-party client library and no API key: the dataset catalog resolves activity_data to its "All Data Normalized" zip, which is downloaded and read directly (#45). FAOSTAT's separate query API at faostatservices.fao.org now requires an authorization header WHEP does not have; the bulk download service is unaffected and needs none.

Usage

get_faostat_data(activity_data, ..., example = FALSE)

Arguments

activity_data

activity data required from FAOSTAT; needs to be one of c('livestock','crop_area','crop_yield','crop_production').

...

can be whichever column name from the resulting bulk data, particularly year, area or ISO3_CODE.

example

Logical. If TRUE, return a small hardcoded example tibble instead of scraping FAOSTAT. Useful for offline demos and documentation. Default FALSE.

Value

tibble of FAOSTAT for activity_data with columns area, item, element, year, value, unit and ISO3_CODE; default is for all years and countries. ISO3_CODE is resolved from the area_iso3c column of polity_area_crosswalk and is NA for FAOSTAT's regional and multi-territory aggregates, including the "China" aggregate (area 351), which by design has no ISO3 code of its own.

Examples

get_faostat_data(example = TRUE)
#> # A tibble: 10 × 7
#>    area     item               element  year   value unit    ISO3_CODE
#>    <chr>    <chr>              <chr>   <int>   <dbl> <chr>   <chr>    
#>  1 Portugal Asses              stocks   2010    1500 An      PRT      
#>  2 Portugal Cattle, dairy      stocks   2010  245000 An      PRT      
#>  3 Portugal Cattle, non-dairy  stocks   2010 1180000 An      PRT      
#>  4 Portugal Chickens, broilers stocks   2010   27000 1000 An PRT      
#>  5 Portugal Goats              stocks   2010  412000 An      PRT      
#>  6 Portugal Horses             stocks   2010   22000 An      PRT      
#>  7 Portugal Mules and hinnies  stocks   2010    3200 An      PRT      
#>  8 Portugal Sheep              stocks   2010 2230000 An      PRT      
#>  9 Portugal Swine, breeding    stocks   2010  340000 An      PRT      
#> 10 Portugal Swine, market      stocks   2010 1980000 An      PRT