Agricultural productivity is key to improving food security.

Agricultural productivity growth measures the increase in agricultural outputs per a given quantity of inputs – or the reduction in inputs per a given level of outputs. In other words, it measures the efficiency with which inputs are used to produce agricultural output. Agricultural productivity growth, as measured by total factor productivity (TFP), which is the most comprehensive measure of productivity growth, means producing more (or the same amount) of food, fiber, and other agricultural outputs with less total input, including less land, water, labor, capital and all materials used in production. TFP is not a measure of output from input intensification (more labor, capital, and other inputs per acre) or land expansion. Agricultural productivity growth is a powerful engine to increase food production without using more resources. It is also a powerful engine to reduce resource use for the production of the same amount of food. Productivity growth is not synonymous with output growth; it is growth in resource efficiency. Why do we need agricultural productivity growth? Since the 1990s, agricultural TFP growth has substituted for land expansion and resource intensification to maintain growth in world agriculture production, though from 2011-2019, TFP slowed and the rate at which new land was brought into production grew. Figure 1 - Global Agricultural Productivity Growth Over the last half century, agricultural TFP growth helped reduce poverty, increase food security, decrease land expansion and associated biodiversity loss, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. It supported economic growth that put money in farmers’ pockets and boosted rural economies. Drilldown: Agricultural productivity growth alleviates poverty and improves food security. Agricultural productivity growth has led to dramatic reductions in global poverty and food insecurity and continues to be a primary engine of growth in many parts of the world. There is broad consensus about the critical role of productivity growth for alleviating poverty and improving food security: “In the agriculture-based countries, which include most of Sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture and its associated industries are essential to growth and to reducing mass poverty and food insecurity. Using agriculture as the basis for economic growth in the agriculture-based countries requires a productivity revolution in smallholder farming.”-World Bank, World Development Report 2008. “Addressing low productivity in food production can be an effective way of raising the overall supply of food, including nutritious foods, by reducing food prices and rising incomes, especially for the poorer family farmers and smallholder producers in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, like farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk.” FAO 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World. “Continuing to make improvements to agricultural productivity, especially in low-income nations, is necessary to ensure sufficient food for an increasing global population and to traverse the last mile toward eliminating extreme poverty in developing nations: Two-thirds of the global extreme poor earn their livelihood in farming and productivity growth in agriculture has the largest impact of any sector on poverty reduction.” World Bank, 2019, Harvesting Prosperity. “Improvements in agricultural productivity, in particular total factor productivity (related to all production factors), offers an opportunity to simultaneously lower the pressure on the environment and increase farmer income by decreasing the input requirements.” 2021 UN Food Systems Summit Scientific Group Paper on Achieving Zero Hunger by 2030. Drilldown: Agricultural productivity growth is key to conserving resources, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and ensuring the viability of agriculture. The expansion of farmland and the intensification of resource use needed to meet the ever-growing global population’s food demand places a heavy burden on natural ecosystems. Raising the productivity of existing natural resources—rather than bringing new natural resources into production—is the only viable option to meet food security needs of current and future generations. Through its impact on drought, floods, pests, weather variability, and even human health, climate change will, and in many cases already is, challenging farmers to produce more with reduced and less reliable natural resource inputs. Innovative approaches to sustainable agricultural productivity growth will be critical to adaptation and to limiting the food security impacts of climate change. There is broad consensus about the critical role of productivity growth for conserving resources, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and ensuring long-term food and nutrition security: “Just as improved TFP has so far played an essential role in economic growth, it can play a major role in the mitigation of, and in adaptation to, climate change in the future. Should technical progress slow or miss the sustainability goals, agricultural production cannot keep pace with the growth in population, while reducing its negative impacts on the environment.” Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, 2021, Making Better Policies for Food Systems. “If today’s levels of production efficiency were to remain constant through 2050, then feeding the planet would entail clearing most of the world’s remaining forests, wiping out thousands more species, and releasing enough GHG emissions to exceed the 1.5°C and 2°C warming targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement—even if emissions from all other human activities were entirely eliminated.” World Resources Institute, 2019, .“Transformation to sustainable food production by 2050 will require at least a 75% reduction of yield gaps.” EAT-Lancet Commission, 2019,