Global cereal yields have increased a lot, but millet and sorghum lag behind

Global average yields of cereal crops have tripled over the past 60 years. This has been crucial to feeding a growing population while sparing natural habitat from expanding agricultural land.

However, some cereal crops have seen much larger gains in efficiency. Maize (corn) and rice achieve the highest yields and have seen huge gains in recent decades. Wheat and barley have also performed well.

As the chart shows, crops like sorghum and millet have lagged behind. A hectare of land could yield 5 to 6 tonnes of corn or rice but only 1 to 1.5 tonnes of millet and sorghum.

It’s not just that yields for these crops are much lower today; growth over the past 60 years has been much more modest, increasing by less than 50%.

This is a huge challenge since these are key staple crops across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where hunger rates are the highest and farmer incomes are the lowest.

Read more in my article on increasing yields in Sub-Saharan Africa →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Global cereal yields have increased a lot, but millet and sorghum lag behind” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.