Cereal yields have increased in all regions, but Africa lags behind

Improved crop yields have allowed the world to feed billions more people while sparing forests and other land from agriculture.

Global yields of cereal crops have tripled since 1961. As you can see in the chart, they have increased in all regions.

However, yields across most African countries have lagged behind. At 1.7 tonnes per hectare, they’re still less than half the global average of 4.2 tonnes.

This is bad for farmers: they get much smaller harvests and live on much lower incomes. It makes it harder for countries to feed their populations. And it’s a problem for biodiversity: lower yields mean that farmland has to expand into wild habitats.

Increasing agricultural productivity — particularly across Africa — is one of the biggest challenges of this century.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Cereal yields have increased in all regions, but Africa lags behind” by Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Arriagada, 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.

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