Release of the 2023 Global Agricultural Productivity Report

We know that you're here because you share our vision for a food and nutrition secure world. This is an event that is held collaboratively, or hosted collaboratively by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the United States Department of Agriculture, including their Sustainable Productivity Growth Coalition. Every year, the US DA produces data on the state of agricultural productivity in the world. And then we spend most of the year trying to interpret that data and deepen the analysis and provide context and understanding of what's going on in the world. When the Gap report was established in 2010, index was created to track changes in TFP growth and to illustrate the future growth necessary, holding inputs constant to sustainably fulfill global needs for agricultural products by 2050. The Gap Index target at that time was a projected rate of 1.73% average annual TFP growth during 2010 to 2050, the solid green line. However, at only 1.14% annually, the global average TFP growth during 2011 to 2021, the orange line fell well below the 1.73% an target. Unfortunately, we are falling well below that rate. And so we have a huge gap that we need to fill. You know, we have enough food to feed the world now. The challenge is, as population continues to grow, as climate change impacts can perhaps become more dire for agriculture, we have to accelerate how efficiently we use resources and inputs in agriculture. That's the real challenge that we're facing now. And we look out to a horizon of 2050. And the need to both double agricultural output but use no more overall resources than we do now. So I would say the tools that we need are sustainable agriculture. Tools like conservation agriculture, No till equipment, improved seed varieties, which can make sure that farmers are more resilient to some of the impacts of climate change. I'm encouraged I definitely looking at the report because when they're collecting data, that means we can measure it. It's when we don't have data, it's difficult to measure. So the fact that there are researches that are going out where data is being collected and research is being really looked at, it helps inform decisions. So I'm optimistic about the future.