Humans have dramatically transformed the surface of the planet through agricultural activities, and today roughly 12% of the global land surface is being used for cultivation. In this paper, we have synthesized satellite-derived land cover data and a rich database of agricultural census data to produce global data sets of the distribution of eighteen major crops across the world. In particular, we combined a spatially explicit global croplands data set with national and sub-national census statistics on harvested area for eighteen crops. The resulting geospatial data sets are representative of the early 1990s, have a spatial resolution of 5 minutes (~10 km) on a latitude-longitude grid, and describe the fraction of a grid cell occupied by each of the eighteen crops. The global patterns of crop distribution in this data are consistent with our knowledge of agricultural geography, and compare favorably to other existing data sets that partially overlap with our product. In addition to describing the global distribution of the various crops, we also analyzed how different crops are grown in combination to form major crop belts throughout the world. Further, we analyzed the patterns of crop commodity diversification across the world. While these data are not sufficiently accurate at local scales, they can be used to analyze crop geography in a regional-to-global context. They can also be used to understand the global patterns of farming systems, in analysis of food security, and within global ecosystem and climate models to understand the environmental consequences of cultivation.