Six decades of ag’s transformation: The evolution of agricultural growth

WASHINGTON — World agriculture has undergone significant transformation over the past six decades.

Over this period, most regions of the world transitioned from a natural resource-dependent to a productivity-led growth path, made possible by the development and adoption of new technologies and farming practices.

A new report issued recently by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, “World Agricultural Production, Resource Use, and Productivity, 1961-2020,” documents those changes, providing insights into shifting patterns of agricultural production and resource use worldwide.

The report also shows the evolution of agricultural growth over time and discusses the implications of these dynamics for sustainable use of natural resources and global food security.

Here are a few findings from the report:

• World production of crop, livestock and aquaculture commodities grew fourfold, from a gross value of $1.1 trillion to $4.3 trillion dollars, at constant 2015 commodity prices.

• The global share of agricultural production in the Global South increased from 44% in 1961 to 73% in 2020.

• The composition of global agricultural output gradually adjusted to meet changes in demand, with modestly increasing output shares for oil crops, non-ruminant livestock, vegetables, fruits, nuts and aquaculture and declining output shares for root and tuber crops, cereal grains and beef cattle.

• Land in global agriculture increased by 8%, from 4.43 to 4.76 billion hectares. Agricultural land in the global north declined by 260 million hectares, whereas it increased by 597 million hectares in the global south, for a net gain of 336 million hectares.

• Irrigated area grew by a factor of 2.3 times between 1961 and 2020 to 343 million hectares; water use in agriculture now accounts for about 70% of total global freshwater withdrawals.

• Labor employed on farms worldwide peaked at 1.06 billion people in 2003, but subsequently declined to 841 million people by 2020, working on approximately 600 million farms.

• The use of synthetic fertilizers, especially nitrogen, expanded rapidly during the 1960s through the 1980s; since the 1990s, it has increased at about the same rate as agricultural output.

• The use of feed concentrates, especially protein dense oil crops and meals, became an increasingly important source of animal nutrition and the major feedstuff for non-ruminant livestock, poultry and farm raised fish.

• Agricultural total factor productivity measures total output of a sector relative to the total inputs of land, labor, capital and materials. The world agricultural TFP growth rate increased over the decades from 1961 to 2010, rising from less than 0.1% per year in 1961-1970 to nearly 2% per year on average by 2001-2010. Agricultural TFP growth then slowed to an average of 1.1% per year over 2011-2020.

• Increases in agricultural TFP reduced the intensity of natural resource use in agriculture; between 1990 and 2020, the global average amount of land used and greenhouse gasses emitted per unit of agricultural output fell by half or more.

• Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world in agricultural productivity; underinvestment in agricultural research and development, limited access by farmers to new technologies and markets, and weak agricultural extension systems are a few of the major constraints to improving farm productivity in this region.