View article

Yields of crops must increase substantially over the coming decades to keep pace with global food demand driven by population and income growth. Ultimately global food production capacity will be limited by the amount of land and water resources available and suitable for crop production, and by biophysical limits on crop growth. Quantifying food production capacity on every hectare of current farmland in a consistent and transparent manner is needed to inform decisions on policy, research, development and investment that aim to affect future crop yield and land use, and to inform on-ground action by local farmers through their knowledge networks. Crop production capacity can be evaluated by estimating potential yield and water-limited yield levels as benchmarks for crop production under, respectively, irrigated and rainfed conditions. The differences between these theoretical yield levels and actual farmers …