Global farm productivity growth stalls, raising risks for food and markets

Innovation in agriculture is falling dangerously behind the demands placed on farmers and agri-food systems, straining future supplies of critical products such as eggs, cotton, and corn- and soy-based biofuels, according to the newly released Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report.

At the heart of the report is total factor productivity (TFP), an efficiency measure that tracks how effectively agricultural inputs such as land, labor, and capital are converted into outputs. TFP growth is widely regarded as a barometer of innovation in agriculture. Yet, global TFP growth has dropped to just 0.76 percent annually during the past decade, barely a third of the 2 percent target needed to sustainably meet demand by mid-century.

Addressing the TFP growth plateau is essential to keeping food and agricultural products available and affordable, ensuring farmers are profitable, and protecting environmental systems. These goals face mounting headwinds as global trade disruptions and declining public research investment slow progress, according to the 2025 GAP Report.

The report, “The TFP Growth Frontier: Plateaus and Progress in Agricultural Productivity Growth,” was released on Oct. 1 by Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at an event at Google’s Fulton Market Chicago office. It features a regional spotlight on the U.S., reporting that the productivity growth of the past decade is falling behind its competitors. Between 2011-20, U.S. agricultural productivity growth actually declined, decreasing an average 0.05 percent annually, while China surged ahead with 1.9 percent annual growth, fueled by double the research and development (R&D) investment of the United States.

“Stagnating agricultural productivity growth has real implications for U.S. farmers,” said Tom Thompson, professor and associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of CALS Global. “Without renewed gains, farmers won’t be able to make a sustainable living providing vital goods to the economy. We urgently need a step-change in public research spending and innovation systems so farmers have affordable, effective productivity-enhancing tools at their fingertips.”

Breaking the productivity plateau

To confront these challenges, the 2025 GAP Report introduces the Total Factor Productivity Growth Frontier, a first-of-its-kind model diagnosing the pain points in agricultural productivity growth and mapping pathways to overcome them. The model organizes existing and emerging technologies, practices, and management tactics into four domains, helping investors, policymakers, researchers, and innovators pinpoint what is holding growth back — and where opportunities lie.

The model also allows countries to be categorized based on their agricultural productivity growth potentials, highlighting regions where negative trends could undermine farmer livelihoods, food affordability, and environmental sustainability.

Using data to lead sustainable growth

Investors, decision-makers, and policymakers must be able to identify the causes of productivity growth stagnation in unique contexts around the world, and implement evidence-based approaches that remove barriers, expand productivity growth ceilings, and shift agricultural systems into new domains and opportunities. 

No one sector will be able to solve this problem alone. Virginia Tech and the GAP Initiative are especially well positioned to facilitate collaboration to restore sustainable agricultural productivity growth. The university’s public-private partnerships create a platform for motivating action and investment to ensure every farmer has access to every proven, appropriate tool to sustainably accelerate agricultural productivity growth.

Working in collaboration with large agribusinesses including Bayer, Corteva, Mosaic, Syngenta, and John Deere; research institutions such as Purdue University and the CGIAR System; and nongovernmental organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Heifer International, the GAP Initiative works across sectors to create systems change. GAP partners are unified in using agricultural productivity growth as a strategy to ensure farmers around the world are profitable as they support food security, environmental and biodiversity protection, and economic goals.

To achieve this vision, the GAP Initiative is expanding its capabilities in systems intelligence to support its partners in identifying high-impact pathways forward. 

“We have a wealth of global data that could be used to drive agricultural productivity growth, but it is fragmented, difficult to access, and exists in different formats that make it hard to analyze,” said Jessica Agnew, associate director of CALS Global and managing editor of the GAP Report. “Data needs to be not only accurate but also actionable, so we can use it to finally break down the silos that are preventing growth to secure a sustainable future.”

To address this, CALS Global has been working in partnership with Google Public Sector and Appnovation to develop a first-of-its-kind tool that can do just that: GAP IQ is a next-generation data intelligence platform for decision-making in agriculture. Powered by artificial intelligence-driven analytics, it streamlines productivity-related data to support real-time decision making by exploring trends and helping model policy options and investment scenarios. 

Gaining insights into opportunities to sustainably grow productivity while creating co-benefits like farm income, food security, and biodiversity will require a wealth of complementary data. This includes information on weather patterns, crop yields, investment, climate risk, and more. GAP IQ will have the ability to build data visualizations, comparisons by country and region, and generative AI trained on trusted sources to uncover what drives growth. If uptake is achieved, this platform has the opportunity to change the way the entire industry innovates.

Priorities to reinvigorate U.S. growth

U.S. agricultural productivity growth has stalled from a combination of entrenched barriers. Widely adopted tools such as mechanization, crop protection, and hybrid crops are no longer delivering the same efficiency gains. At the same time, farmers have been slow to adopt next-generation technologies such as variable-rate applications and GPS-enabled yield monitors, while public investment in agricultural research has been chronically underfunded for decades. The 2025 GAP Report offers four recommendations to reinvigorate U.S. growth:

1. Reignite public R&D investment.

Public R&D spending is the cornerstone of sustainable productivity growth. Decades of underinvestment have slowed the pace of discovery. Evidence suggests that pushing out the TFP Growth Frontier will require increasing public agricultural R&D investment by $2.2 billion, comparable to the post–World War II expansion of the U.S. research enterprise.

2. Close the adoption chasm.

Accelerating the adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies, practices, and management tactics across all scales of production is essential to reaching the TFP Growth Frontier. Closing the gap between innovation and adoption requires a revitalized agricultural knowledge and innovation system with coordinated support across financial, infrastructure, and human capital dimensions.

3. Strengthen the regulatory environment.

A modern, efficient, and science-based regulatory framework is critical to reducing innovation bottlenecks and ensuring the timely deployment of productivity-enhancing technologies. For example, the current Coordinated Framework for Biotechnology, established in 1987, has not kept pace with scientific advancements, resulting in prolonged and costly approval processes for genetically engineered traits and crop-protection technologies.

4. Foster public-private collaboration.

Bridge the “valley of death” between research and widespread adoption through close collaboration between public and private stakeholders. Public investment often catalyzes breakthroughs, while the private sector excels at scaling and deployment.

Written by Teresa Welsh