Estimated land area for selected crops in Yemen, 1975-1993. The left and right ordinate axes refer to the area planted in the cereals (sorghum, millet, barley) and cash crops (coffee, qat), respectively.

Time-series of the estimated national production of qat compared with coffee. Data sources: YAR 1988, RY 1992, RY 1994, and UN, 1993.

Yemeni agricultural statistics can be misleading, for after unification in 1990, South Yemen data have simply been included in the national totals. It is also feasible that YR 1992 concatenated South and North Yemen data as far back as 1987. Even so, the temporal trends are evident: (a) an increase in the area of both qat and coffee coming, we suggest, at the expense of sorghum alone (since millet is grown only at low elevations in the Tihama unsuited to qat); and (b) qat is evidently not replacing coffee groves, as the Ministry of Agriculture's Coffee Division believes (pers. comm. with authors, Dec. 1994). (back)