What would be a recommended source of historical data for commodity production amounts which is current up to the previous year or better?
For example, if I wanted to know the annual global production of steel (metric tonnes), timber, cotton, soybeans, aluminum, salt, sulfuric acid, asphalt, paperboard, wheat, kaolin, copper, silica, etc etc, where could I find that information. Note I want physical amounts (tonnes, bushels or whatever), not prices or dollar volume.
I work for Quandl and on our site I can recommend two free historical databases that you may want to check out:
The United Nations Industrial Commodities Database, I believe, shows production amounts for various commodities like steel, petroleum, glass etc. in metric tons for different countries: https://www.quandl.com/data/UINC
The United Nations Energy Statistics Database also shows production for other things like alcohol, gasoline etc. in metric tons: https://www.quandl.com/data/UENG
When you go to each database above, just search for "production" within each database. Hope this helps!
I think you can find these data in the web pages of the central statistic offices of each country, or the web page of a common statistic office like it is in the EU. They also collect data from outside the region.
I don't know whether exists a "global world office" which collect and examine data from the whole world...I guess there is no this kind of office. But I am not a totally expert in statistic offices.
Maybe it is also useful to see the websites of the worlds largest stock markets. They store quantity data, too, not only prices, I think.
