Crop Yields Around the World: Closing the Gap and Raising the Potential

Published Date
pp 2720-2740

Author 

R. A. (Tony) Fischer

Definition of Subject

The entry assumes that yield increase will continue to play a dominant role in world food security, as it has over the last 60 years. It is restricted to annual grain crops, since these dominate the world’s arable landscape (>70%) and humankind’s food supply (>70%), including grain used as livestock feed. Crop yield is the weight of grain, at some agreed standard moisture content, harvested per unit of land area per crop (note, there can be two or even three annual crops per year in some favored environments, meaning a cropping intensity of 200% or 300%, respectively). The starting point for yield is usually the field, district, regional, or national average yield in kg or t per hectare, as reported in surveys or local or national statistics. Here this is referred to as farm yield (FY, t/ha). This and many related cropping statistics are collated annually for all countries by FAO (

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