Title page
Contents
Abstract 3
Acknowledgments 3
Summary 6
Forces Shaping World Agriculture 8
Agricultural Outputs: Changing Location and Composition 19
Production Shifted to the Global South 19
Commodity Composition of World Agriculture Gradually Changed 23
Animal Output Composition Shows Declining Value Share for Ruminants 24
Agricultural Input Use 25
Agricultural Land Expanded in the Global South and Contracted in the Global North 25
Labor Employed in Agriculture Peaked While Agricultural Capital Stock Grew 30
Intermediate Inputs Often Embody New Technologies 32
Agricultural Productivity 37
Land and Labor Productivity Increased Across a Broad Range of Factor Endowments 38
Total Factor Productivity (TFP) Accounted for an Increasing Share of Agricultural Growth 40
Where Has Agricultural Growth Been Slowing? 41
Policy Drivers of Productivity Growth in Agriculture: Investment in Research and Extension 43
Agriculture and the Environment 47
Summing Up: Implications for Sustainable Agricultural Growth 55
References 57
Table 1. Composition of world agricultural output, 1961-65 and 2016-20 24
Table 2. Number and average size of farm holdings by region, circa 2010 29
Table 3. Public agricultural research and development (R&D) spending by world region, 1991-2016 44
Table 4. Public agricultural extension staff employed in selected countries and by region 46
Table 5. Agricultural resource-use intensities by region, 2016-20 annual average 54
Figure 1. World agricultural output, price, cropland, and population since 1900 9
Figure 2. Major developments affecting world agriculture since 1961 12
Figure 3. World agricultural output in the Global North and Global South, 1961-2020 20
Figure 4. World agricultural output by region, 1961-65 and 2016-20 21
Figure 5. Agricultural output per capita worldwide and by region, 1961-65 and 2016-20 23
Figure 6. Diversification in global animal and aquaculture production, 1961-65 and 2016-20 25
Figure 7. World and regional agricultural land area in 1961 and 2020 26
Figure 8. Actual and quality-adjusted agricultural land area in 2020 28
Figure 9. World agricultural employment and agriculture's share of total employment, 1961-2020 30
Figure 10. World agricultural labor and capital stock, 1961-2020 31
Figure 11. Capital-labor substitution in agriculture 32
Figure 12. Quantity and composition of agricultural fertilizers applied worldwide, 1961-2020 33
Figure 13. Global quantity and composition of animal feed concentrates, 1961-2020 34
Figure 14. Quantity of agricultural pesticide use by region, 1990-2020 35
Figure 15. Diffusion of modern varieties of food crops in the Global South, 1961-2020 36
Figure 16. Diffusion of genetically modified (GM) crop varieties worldwide, 1995-2019 37
Figure 17. Trends in labor productivity, land productivity, and land-labor ratios by region, 1961-2020 39
Figure 18. Sources of growth in world agricultural output by decade, 1961-2020 41
Figure 19. Sources of growth in agricultural output in the Global North and Global South by decade, 1961-2020 42
Figure 20. Average annual growth in agricultural total factor productivity by country, 1991-2020 43
Figure 21. Crop output, cropland and irrigation water use, and resource-use intensity, 1961-2020 48
Figure 22. Agricultural nutrient loadings and nutrient-loading intensities, 1961-2020 50
Figure 23. Agricultural GHG emissions and emissions intensities, 1990-2020 52
Boxes
International Comparisons of Agricultural Total Factor Productivity in Global Agriculture 10
Measuring Global Agricultural Production and Resource Use 17
Box Figures
Figure B1. Agricultural growth comes from increasing the use of land and other resources and from raising the productivity of those resources 11
Figure B2. Global regions in the International Agricultural Productivity data product 19