The following sections describe how to handle non-standard upload scenarios.
Multiple cropping
If there are multiple harvests during the same year (excluding the case of successive gathering), a new Cycle should be created for each harvest. This is in line with the FAO's approach.
Successive gathering
If there is successive gathering from a crop during a year, only one Cycle should be created with one Product for that crop. This again follows the FAO's approach.
The value for the Product can either be the sum of the total harvest in the year, or an array in which each value in the array represents a gathering event.
Failed or unharvested crops
If crops are not harvested, e.g., due to crop disease or changing market conditions, the Site area should not change and is recorded as normal, and this represents the area cultivated or sown.
Area harvested should also be specified, as this will either be zero in cases of no harvest or less than area under cultivation in cases of partial harvest. Crop yield should be specified and set to zero if the crop failed completely or was not harvested. This also follows the FAO's approach.
Short fallows and similar cases
Periods between the harvest of one crop and sowing of another which last less than a year should not have their own Cycle. This follows FAOSTAT conventions. Instead any Inputs or Practices related to these periods should be included in the Cycle of the main crop that follows. This means Cycles cover the period from the harvest of the preceding crop to the harvest of the current crop, which is our recommendation for all temporary crop Cycles.
The land cover during this period can either be specified by adding a Management blank node to the Site, or by creating a Product in the Cycle. Any term from the land cover glossary can be used. A Property should be added to each Management node or Product to state whether the land cover is either a Cover crop, Catch crop, Ground cover crop, or Short fallow crop.
Add the duration of the short fallow period if available by using the startDate and endDate fields on Management or Product.
Note that long fallow periods, lasting greater than one year, should have their own Cycle. This follows FAOSTAT conventions.
Intercropping and poly-aquaculture systems
The HESTIA glossary doesn't have species-specific seed Input terms. The Product of the Cycle determines what seed type was planted (e.g., if the product is "Aubergine, fruit", the input seed refers to aubergine seed).
When multiple crops are grown as part of the same cycle, two or more seed inputs should be recorded, and the correspondingSpecies field should be used to specify what landCover they are associated with.
The correspondingSpecies field should also be used when adding the same Practice multiple times to refer to different crops (e.g., to set different planting densities or plantation ages).
Similarly, correspondingSpecies can be used in poly-aquaculture systems to specify which liveAquaticSpecies each egg or juvenile term is associated with.
Animal feed
The study may give data for the specific constituents of a feed blend fed to animals. If so, create a separate Cycle to represent the blending of multiple feed ingredients into a single concentrate feed. The Inputs to this Cycle can be crops, animal products, or other blended feeds, and the Product is the feed blend. Create an impactAssessment.id for the concentrate feed blend. This can then be linked to the feed blend Input of the animal production Cycle using the impactAssessment.id.
Packaging
HESTIA does not yet have a full glossary and schema for packaging; this is planned for future work. Where a source covers packaging, create a separate Cycle for it rather than combining it with the processing Cycle, and use the uploadNotes field to record what the source reported.
Because there is no packaging schema yet, there is no way to identify which material inputs are packaging. Packaging materials are uploaded as ordinary material Inputs and carry no marker distinguishing them from other materials, so a data user cannot separate packaging from processing from the Inputs alone.
Cycles across multiple Sites
A Cycle may occur on multiple Sites (e.g., if animals move between pasture and housing). In this case, create two or more Sites and link them to the Cycle using cycle.site.id and cycle.otherSites.id. The duration which animals spend on each Site can be indicated through the cycle.siteDuration and cycle.otherSitesDuration.
Cropping Cycles across multiple years
Sometimes, crop production data in a research article or database are averaged across multiple Cycles.
Following FAOSTAT conventions, for annual crops, a Cycle should be the period from harvest of the previous crop to harvest of the current crop. For permanent crops, Cycles should last one year. We will raise an error on any uploads with cycleDuration that does not match this. Animal or other production Cycles do not need to adhere to these conventions.
To handle this in your upload:
Ideally split the Cycle up into a Cycle for each harvest to harvest period or each year using the underlying data.
If this is not possible, upload a Cycle representing the period from harvest to harvest which is an average over the data. Set the dates as the average date. Set the cycleDuration as an average over the Cycles. Use the uploadNotes field to document this.
If this is not possible, duplicate the Cycle for each year. For example, if your data are an average over three harvests, duplicate the Cycle three times and change the startDate, endDate, and cycleDuration to reflect three separate periods from harvest to harvest. Use the uploadNotes field to document this.
Hot carcass weight
Sometimes, production quantities of animal products are provided in terms of hot carcass weight, whereas the terms in the Glossary are in cold carcass weight.
To handle this, convert the data from hot carcass weight to cold carcass weight using a sensible assumption (e.g., 2% to 5% mass loss). Upload the data using the terms in kg cold carcass weight. Then add the Property Processing conversion, hot carcass weight to cold carcass weight to the Input or Product defining the conversion you used.
Cover crop
Cover crops should be added in the Practice node of a Cycle using the landCover term corresponding to the plant (for example, Alfalfa plant), with the value being the percentage area of your Site covered by the cover crop.
A Property should be added to them to clarify that they are cover crops. There are four different terms in the Glossary relating to cover crops: Cover crop, Catch crop, Ground cover, and Short fallow crop (the difference between each term is explained in the term's definition in the Glossary). These terms are Properties and can be added to a crop, forage, or landCover term with value = true to specify that the term is a cover crop.
If the cover crop is harvested (this is only possible for Catch crop) or if the amount of biomass generated by the cover crop is known, the crop or forage term corresponding to the plant (for example, Rye, grain) should also be added in the Product node of a Cycle (in addition to the landCover term in the Practice node), with the value being the harvested yield or biomass created.
If you have further information about cover crops for years preceding the first Cycle taking place on your Site, you can add this information in the Management node of your Site using terms from the landCover glossary.
It is good practice to add a startDate and endDate specifying the time interval during which a cover crop is on the ground when landCover terms are used (when crop or forage terms are used in Product nodes, the startDate and endDate relate to the crop's harvest, not to the actual period during which the crop is on the ground).
Sometimes, multiple cycles occur on the same site.
To handle this in your upload, ideally change the endDate for each Cycle. If this is not possible, duplicate the Site for each Cycle. If the Site has an area, divide the area between the number of Cycles on that Site. For example, if your data consists of three cycles, with no specific calendar year associated with each of them, duplicate the Site three times and change the area to be a third of its original value, keeping the startDate, endDate, and cycleDuration of all three Cycles the same. Use the uploadNotes field to document this.
Green manure
A crop worked into the soil instead of harvested (for example a clover ley ploughed in before wheat) is recorded in the Cycle of the crop that follows, not as its own Cycle or as crop residue. Cycles on the same Site cannot overlap.
If it was sown in the same Cycle as the main crop, set correspondingSpecies on each seed Input to the plant it was sown for, or the two are rejected as duplicates.
Green manure brought in from another field is recorded the same way, as an Input on the field that received it. Add its nitrogenContent as a Property if known; HESTIA assumes 0.4% otherwise.
Soil and weather measurements
Soil pH: use the Soil pH term with the method used. HESTIA's models expect pH measured in water and do not convert, so record the water value if you have both.
Repeated soil tests: one Measurement per test, each with its own date and depth. HESTIA uses the one closest to the end of the Cycle.
Measured on a nearby field: set methodClassification to physical measurement on nearby site.
Transport within the farm
Record fuel used to move things around the farm as a fuel Input, such as Diesel, with its operation set to a transport operation, such as Transporting products within site, with trailer. Not in the Product's transport field, which HESTIA does not use for emissions.