Visualization: Tomato Production vs. Harvest By Country

     The data I used was a compilation of tomato production statistics from data.gov that includes U.S. production (in thousands of pounds) and harvest (hectacres of yield) numbers as well as production and harvest numbers of 174 other countries. According to the data, country leaders in tomato production (in thousands of pounds) for 1990 were the U.S. (24089882), China (17103486), and USSR (15879877); in 2008, the country leaders in tomato production were China (74541950), the U.S. (27725080), and Turkey (24218632). Furthermore, the country leaders in tomato harvest (hectacres of yield) for 1990 were USSR (343), China (310), and India (290); in 2008, the country leaders in tomato harvest were China (1454), Egypt (571.8), and India (571.7). 
     After looking at these numbers, it seemed that the same countries were dominating both the production and yield aspects of the tomato industry. What does this say about these countries? Smaller countries do not have the ability to devote 1,454 hectacres to harvesting tomatoes. Is the yield effectiveness a better measure of how well countries compete against each other in tomato production? To calculate this statistic, I decided to measure the amount of production vs. the amount of harvest per country. 
     Using the Motion Chart Gadget in Google Docs, I was able to produce a visualization of the production vs. harvest statistic for each country for the years between 1990 and 2008. 

As you can see, the consistent top performers of tomato production per hectacre of land is the Netherlands, followed by the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. The United States, India, China, and the USSR are to the middle and lower end of the pack when it comes to effectively producing tomatoes in comparison to the amount of land these countries have dedicated to that particular crop production. 
     From this data, I was unable to determine a cause by which the predominately northern European countries were able to provide substantially greater production yield effectiveness versus the rest of the world. However, if such cause(s) is/were determined and the tomato production yield effectiveness of the Netherlands was translated to other population-booming countries, the increase in development of those countries would help them become more sustainable and independent agriculturally.