Is agricultural productivity slowing?

Declining rates of growth in crop yields, slowing investment in agricultural research, and rising commodity prices has raised concerns of a general slowdown in global agricultural productivity. However, there is no evidence of a general slowdown in the rate of growth in agricultural output. Thus, for productivity to slow, input use in agriculture would have to be expanding at an accelerated rate. Available data suggest that growth rates in agricultural land, labor and inputs in total have been steadily slowing over time, leading to accelerated growth rates in their average productivities. Increased cropping intensity has compensated for declining growth in average yield per harvest to keep land productivity growth from falling. Most of the acceleration in world agricultural productivity growth has taken place in developing countries; for industrialized countries, long-term trends show gradually declining agricultural productivity growth.