Visualizing the world's food supply chains

Mapping the origins of the world's crops

Food has evolved alongside humanity, and through globalized trade, much of the world can enjoy foods once isolated to one region. Examine where your favorite foods originated from and see how diet differs across cultures with these interactive...

See a breakdown of how some of the most common food items are traded across the globe, including the key trade relationships for each item.

Visualize the global supply chain of medicine, which may begin with basic research in the US, but outsource intermediate steps.

How the world produces food, in drone photos

Drone photographer George Steinmetz spent a decade documenting the vast scope of humanity's agriculture using drone photography. Roughly 40% of the Earth's surface is dedicated to growing food, and experts suggest we must produce 60% more food than we do now to feed the projected population in 2050. Browse the absolutely stunning photos here.

The food industry's hard-to-solve pollution

One-quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. That whopping number includes production and post-farm processes like distribution. See a visualization of the data along with a breakdown explaining how each process contributes to emissions, and why it’s so difficult to improve the agriculture industry.

Imagining the farms of the future

About 10,000 years ago, humans began to farm. This agricultural revolution was a turning point in our history and enabled the existence of civilization. Today, nearly 40 percent of our planet is farmland. Spread all over the world, these lands are the pieces to a global puzzle we're all facing: in the future, how can we feed every member of a growing population a healthy diet? Brent Loken investigates in this seven-minute video.

The ancient crops we've forgotten how to grow

Roughly half of all world calories today stem from maize, wheat, and rice. But for most of history, plants were domesticated in highly local places. This video dives into the scientists learning about crops no longer highly in use that once fueled entire civilizations in North America. Some forgotten crops include pitseed goosefoot, maygrass, and sumpweed.

Visualizing the enormity of plastic waste compared to global landmarks

The team at Reuters Graphics visualizes the world’s addiction to plastic bottles. Around the world, almost 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute. The illustrations included in this visual explainer show what that pile of plastic would look like if it was collected over longer periods of time and how large the piles would be compared to famous landmarks.

Explore the water footprint of producing various proteins, fruits, and vegetables

This interactive gallery highlights the various types of water behind the production of biofuels, foods, and materials such as cotton. Diets high in bovine meat, whose production requires 15,415 liters of water per kilogram (1,847 gallons per pound), are among the most water-intensive, whereas every kilogram of vegetables uses 322 liters of water (39 gal/lb) to produce.

Visualizing the trans-Atlantic slave trade in two minutes

This animation shows all recorded slave shipments from the 16th to 19th centuries, conceptualizing not only the slave trade with America but South America as well.

The world's top agriculture-producing countries

Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the global economy, and while every country produces some of its own food, some countries dominate the markets. The US, Brazil, and the Netherlands are the world's top three agriculture exporters. See more charts and statistics on the topic with this Investopedia article.

An eye-opening interactive journey into the global drug trade

POPPY Interactive reveals how drug money destabilizes entire countries, fuels global conflicts, and allows a worldwide illegal economy to grow. Navigating the site involves diving into three major routes—the Northern Route, the Balkan Route, and...

Visualizing the world's wealth in 2019

The world has a net worth of $360T. The U.S. economy continues to dominate given its sheer size, Asia and Europe are not that far behind.

See how food access varies across America with these interactive maps that show grocery store proximity.

Visualizing the world's population centers

What does population density look like on a global scale? These detailed 3D renders illustrate our biggest urban areas and highlight population trends.

What happens when the population grows faster than the food supply?

Human history is shaped by our ability to feed ourselves. See how population growth is tied to farmland, and how food production’s profound environmental effect shows us the need for change.

How global conditions have improved over 200 years

In an era of 24-hour news, it can feel as if the world is on a perpetual downward spiral. This set of visualizations zoom out, and show how global living conditions have improved in recent centuries. The percentage of people living in extreme...

Visualize population densities around the world represented as geographic terrain and how those densities changed from 1900 to 1975 to 2015.

Visualizing the built world compared to the natural world

In the last century, humans have covered the Earth in 1,300 metric gigatons of built material, known as technomass. That amount is more than the Earth's entire biomass at 1,100 GT, which includes all living organisms. To get a sense of the scale of this comparison, click through this striking, simple visualization showcasing the various organisms comprising biomass as well as the materials making up the technomass.

Five charts that changed the world

Data visualization helps us understand the world, providing a powerful way to communicate complicated information in a quick and efficient way. There are many different ways to create graphs, and these five examples—the pie chart, geographic dot...

Explore this interactive visualization of illnesses known to jump from animals to people, and learn how these zoonotic diseases spread.

Data visualizations showing population growth around the world

This page presents data, charts, and analysis on changes in population growth around the world. Over the last few centuries, the human population has gone through an extraordinary change. In 1800, there were 1 billion people; today, there are more...

Microplastics are entering human food chains through carrots, wheat, and other foodstuffs grown in farmlands fertilized by sewage sludge.

Visual deep dive into the collapse of insects

The most diverse group of organisms on the planet are in trouble, with recent research suggesting insect populations are declining at an unprecedented rate. Explore this visual interactive on the issue from Reuters Graphics.

An interactive periodic table maps every possible combination of cheese variables

Plotting milk type, texture, rind, mold, aging, and processing as intersecting axes, the tool shows which combinations already exist as named cheeses, which survive only as rare regional styles, and which remain entirely unexplored.

How a single company hooked the world on herbicides

How harmful are today’s herbicides for us humans, and for the environments they’re seeping into? And do we really need weedkillers to feed the world?

How key commodities have performed since 2019, visualized

Due in part to factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain issues, commodities experienced significant volatility from 2019 to 2025. For instance, coffee bean prices saw major swings in recent years due to climate challenges in countries including Brazil and Vietnam.

Making sense of the complex logistics of product returns

Americans returned over $800B worth of stuff in 2022, more than the entire gross domestic product of some nations. This entertaining, in-depth video dives into the complex logistics of the reverse supply chain and how it works. Estimates peg the...

The dark side of modern sugar production

Humanity's ancestors evolved to wring more calories from sugary fruits by storing excess sugar as fat, an adaption that's culminated in many peoples' palettes preferring calorie-rich sweet. Now, the desire for sugar has both contributed to a widespread health crisis and been at the center of atrocities around the world.

Why is rice so popular?

From Spanish paella to West African jollof rice, rice is a staple in dishes across the world. This colorful animated video dives into the global expansion of rice, which contributes more than 20% of the calories consumed by humans each year. Learn about rice’s beginnings thousands of years ago, the environmental consequences of its popularity, and the potential for positive changes in the future.

Here's how humans migrated across the world

From our deepest origins in Africa all the way to the Americas, by looking at the fossils and archaeological materials we have been able to trace the path our ancestors took during thee short window of time when we took over the world.

The evolving industry of flowers

The global trade of flowers is worth billions of dollars, and new markets and supply chains are opening each year. This multimedia deep dive takes a look at the origins of the modern flower trade in the Netherlands and its expansion into dozens of...

The top wine-producing countries in the world

Three European countries dominate the world in wine production: France, Italy, and Spain. This table lays out how the world's top wine-producing countries compare in terms of annual volume, with Europe and the United States comprising the bulk of production. Visualize the country-by-country difference with this bar graph.

Visualize energy sources and uses across the US

Want to understand the basics of America’s current energy situation? The National Academies, advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine, provides objective information about the United States’ current energy sources and uses, as well as a look forward to the future of energy.

See a data visualization of the East India Company's trade

This tool visualizes the East India Company’s trade from 1760 to 1834, letting you track shipments of tea, textiles, metals, and more. Users can sort by commodity, origin, destination, and date to see London’s vast imperial supply network that shaped the British Empire.

Mapping the route options between the Pacific and Atlantic

This map shows some of the alternative trade route options that are available to shipping companies, from overland routes that rely on railways to transport goods coast-to-coast, to Arctic Ocean passages.

Visualizing New York City's public transportation commutes

New York City is one of the largest cities in the world, and transports one of the largest numbers of commuters on a daily basis. This data visualization tells the stories of those commuters, showing the varying volume of travelers throughout the week and day, where they are going, and maps of high-traffic areas like stadiums and midtown. Dive into the data here.

Mapping the world's cell towers

Millions of cell towers around the world help connect the world's 8 billion people via cell phones and the Internet. But access to such coverage, while still expanding, is not equal. This data visualization depicts the world's many cell connections across a global map, revealing cell use hot spots and the world's many gaps in coverage.

Explore an interactive atlas of worldwide critical mineral production

This tool from the US Geological Survey tracks the production over over 90 minerals in 180 countries. For a selected country, you can see how many critical minerals it produces, where else those minerals are produced, and what each mineral is used for.

Visualizing the symbols and history of world flags

More than 200 world flags feature high-intent designs, projecting ideals and values to the world through archetypal symbols, colors, and shapes. This page effectively depicts the data behind symbol and shape usage, how much each country's flag has changed over time, the most popular colors used, and more in a series of elegantly simple charts.

Visualize the global Venezuelan diaspora

This visualization maps Venezuela’s mass diaspora, showing how millions have fled abroad—primarily to Latin America, with significant flows to the US and Europe—creating one of the most significant displacement crises in the world.

Infographic illustrates the diverse and fragile Amazon ecosystems

This infographic helps readers better understand the vast rivers, forests, plants, and animals that call the Amazon rainforest home. Home to the largest collection of plant and animal species in the world, the Amazon rainforest has 16 thousand known...

Trace the rise of oil: from early drilling to today’s global power

This animated map video vividly illustrates how petroleum shaped global politics and industry—from 18th-century uses and 19th-century drilling booms in North America to today’s OPEC strategies, shale revolution, and geopolitical oil influence.

Countries tried to curb plastic waste, but the US keeps shipping more

Data show that American exporters continue to ship plastic waste overseas, often to poorer countries, even though most of the world has agreed to not accept it.

A timelapse mapping more than 30,000 Transatlantic slave ship voyages

Roughly 12 million people from Africa were forcibly moved to North and South America over two centuries. This map meticulously showcases every ship's origin, destination, timeline, and more, revealing the scale of the Transatlantic slave trade.

Visualizing California's wine production

While Europe has France, Italy, and Spain, the US has California. The bulk of US wine production takes place in the Golden State, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the United States’ nearly 800 million gallons produced each year. This chart compares California and United States wine production from 1995 through 2022. Production in both has been trending down for several years, partially due to extreme weather events.

A brief explainer on food expiration dates and what they really mean

Roughly 20% of food items in the US are thrown out because consumers don't understand how to interpret expiration labels. Over time, when supermarkets began carrying processed foods, grocers use packaging codes to track how long foods had been on...

The Russia-Ukraine war greatly affected the global food supply

Russia's invasion devastated Ukraine's agricultural sector, destroying farms, ports, and grain infrastructure and causing over $40B in losses. Disrupted exports fueled global food insecurity, while Moscow leveraged its grain exports to expand influence across the Global South.

Trans-Atlantic and intra-American slavery: a visual database

This interactive database provides insight into the trading of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. This database offers maps, articles, timelapses, videos of 3D slave ship models, and searchable databases on enslavers and the enslaved. According...

Visualize the different parts of the digestive tract, a roughly 30-foot tube which runs from our mouths to our rear.