Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050

Several studies have shown that global crop production needs to double by 2050 to meet the projected demands from rising population, diet shifts, and increasing biofuels consumption. Boosting crop yields to meet these rising demands, rather than clearing more land for agriculture has been highlighte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-06, Vol.8 (6), p.e66428-e66428
Main Authors: Ray, Deepak K, Mueller, Nathaniel D, West, Paul C, Foley, Jonathan A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Agriculture - methods
Biofuels
Calories
Cereal crops
Clearing
Corn
Crop production
Crop Production - trends
Crop yield
Crop yields
Crops
Crops, Agricultural - supply & distribution
Earth Sciences
Farmlands
Food supply
Food Supply - statistics & numerical data
Harvesting
Humans
Oryza
Population Growth
Rice
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Soybeans
Trends
Wheat
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Summary:Several studies have shown that global crop production needs to double by 2050 to meet the projected demands from rising population, diet shifts, and increasing biofuels consumption. Boosting crop yields to meet these rising demands, rather than clearing more land for agriculture has been highlighted as a preferred solution to meet this goal. However, we first need to understand how crop yields are changing globally, and whether we are on track to double production by 2050. Using ∼2.5 million agricultural statistics, collected for ∼13,500 political units across the world, we track four key global crops-maize, rice, wheat, and soybean-that currently produce nearly two-thirds of global agricultural calories. We find that yields in these top four crops are increasing at 1.6%, 1.0%, 0.9%, and 1.3% per year, non-compounding rates, respectively, which is less than the 2.4% per year rate required to double global production by 2050. At these rates global production in these crops would increase by ∼67%, ∼42%, ∼38%, and ∼55%, respectively, which is far below what is needed to meet projected demands in 2050. We present detailed maps to identify where rates must be increased to boost crop production and meet rising demands.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0066428