Sown but not harvested: Unharvested annual crop area in Córdoba, Colombia, and its limited association with soils and El Niño-Southern Oscillation phases, 2007-2021

The share of sown area that reaches harvest is a component of agricultural production, yet the search made for this study found no municipal analysis of it for Córdoba, Colombia. This study aims to measure the unharvested share of annual crop area in the department's 30 municipalities and to examine its association with land capability and with El Niño-Southern Oscillation phases. Official Municipal Agricultural Evaluations were used for 14 comparable years (2007-2017 and 2019-2021), with 2018 excluded as incomplete and 2022-2025 reported separately because the official convention changed. They were combined with 1:100,000 land capability maps and the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, following a protocol set before associations were computed. Of 2,174,459 ha sown, 7.80% was reported as not harvested, ranging from 2.48% to 17.03% between years and from 2.22% to 19.72% between municipalities. Maize, rice, cassava and yam accounted for 94.29% of the unharvested area. The share of land limited by excess moisture was not associated with the municipal rate (ρ = 0.08; p = 0.68). The association with the index had the expected sign but was imprecise and weakened without 2010. The municipal ordering did not persist between 2007-2013 and 2014-2021 (ρ = 0.02). Land capability maps and single-period rankings are not sufficient for territorial prioritisation, and recording the cause of non-harvest could improve the official statistics.