Global agriculture must significantly increase production to meet by mid-century the demands for food, feed, and fiber posed by the world’s enlarging population. An important requirement to meeting those demands is a lifting of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates. The...

The potential contributions of new biotechnologies to sustainable food and income security have been the subject of widespread discussions around the turn of the twenty-first century. But distributional issues of which segments of GMO adopters benefit the most have not been given ample...

Global agriculture must significantly increase production to meet by mid-century the demands for food, feed, and fiber posed by the world’s enlarging population. An important requirement to meeting those demands is a lifting of agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates. The...

This paper surveys the literature on pollinator declines and related concerns regarding global food security. Methods for valuing the economic risks associated with pollinator declines are also reviewed. A computable general equilibrium (CGE) approach is introduced to assess the effects of a...

Land quality and land degradation affect agricultural productivity, but quantifying these relationships has been difficult. Data are limited, and impacts are sensitive to the choices that farmers make. Summarizing new research by economists, soil scientists, and geographers, this report explores...

Econometric and simulation analyses indicate that land degradation does not threaten agricultural productivity growth and food security at the global level, but problems exist in some areas. Improving market performance could reduce erosion-induced yield losses to 0.1 percent per year and the...

The study investigates whether African agricultural efficiency levels has been improving or not and what drives its over the years based on 442 frontier studies using meta-regression analysis. The results show that mean efficiency estimates from studies decrease significantly as year of survey...

The study reveals the contribution of increased agricultural productivity in food security in the developing countries. An intensive literature review is conducted in writing the article. It has depicted the different productivity measures in agriculture and their relative uses. It explains...

This is a prepublication version of J.M. Beddow, T.M. Hurley, P.G. Pardey, and J.M. Alston’s “Food Security: Yield Gap” chapter in N. Van Alfen, editor-in-chief, Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Vol. 3, San Diego: Elsevier, 2014, pp. 352-365.

Agriculture provides the main support for Zambia’s rural economy, and because of this, growth in the agricultural sector is the clearest avenue through which poverty reduction can be achieved in Zambia. Yet despite widespread recognition of the strong connection between agricultural...