World Agricultural Output Growth Continues to Slow, Reaching Lowest Rate in Six Decades

Agricultural productivity growth helps farmers meet the food and fiber demands of growing global populations while using relatively fewer resources. One of the most informative measures of agricultural productivity is total factor productivity (TFP), which measures the efficiency with which agricultural inputs are combined to produce output. In its International Agricultural Productivity data product, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates annual indexes for global, regional, and national agricultural output and productivity starting in 1961. In 2022, ERS updated its estimates and extended the series to include 2020 data. The update shows the growth rate for global output was nearly a third slower in the 2010s compared with the 2000s, falling to 1.93 percent per year in 2011–20 from 2.72 percent a year in 2001–10. In the most recent decade, global agricultural output increased at the slowest pace of the six decades covered in the data series.