World cereals production has increased steadily from 1961 to 2007, at an annual average rate of 2.2%. This performance results mainly from yields improvement (annual change average rate of 2%). Areas harvested remained almost constant (annual change average rate of 0.2%). In fact, global areas harvested have been shrinking since the peak of 726,612 thousand hectares in 1981 to only 695,599 thousand hectares (96% of the peak value) in 2007.
This situation elicits three comments:
» The productivity improvements known as the "green revolution" that fuelled the production surge during the years 1945-1970 are likely to dry up. The pipeline of high-yield varieties is empty, the intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides is triggering adverse consequences, and irrigation suffers from the global freshwater scarcity.
» Harvested areas not only could continue shrinking, but also their marginal productivity could diminish, since the best arable land has already been exploited.
» To compound the problem, generalised soil erosion and exhaustion of aquifers are liable to hinder the growth of cereals output worldwide.
[Primary Y-axis: production in million metric tonnes, and yield in kilogram/hectare. Secondary Y-axis: area harvested in thousand hectares. Dots represent actual data, for which the corresponding regression lines are provided in the same colour.]

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Sources: see FAOSTAT.

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