This post dives into agriculture in the global context with the help of a few interesting charts from the internet. The sources are noted where not part of the chart itself. The numbers throughout the post are from various sources – please refer to these for directional purposes only. Some charts might require a browser zoom-in.
The idea is to gain an appreciation of agriculture and its nuances.
a) Global land area under cultivation
The World has around 13 billion hectares of land, excluding Antarctica. Of this, around 4.8 billion hectares is what FAO calls ‘agricultural area’. The agricultural area includes cropland, permanent meadows and pastures. Of this agricultural land, “in 2021, Cropland covered 1.6 billion hectares, permanent meadows and pastures 3.2 billion hectares.” Of this cropland, 183 million hectares is under permanent crops. Rest of the 1.4 billion hectares is arable land, of which, temporary crops such as wheat, rice and maize cover close to 1.2 billion hectares, rest being temporary meadows and pastures.
(1 hectare = 0.01 km square (or 10k sq metres). 100 hectares is 1 kilometer square.)
The above is an old chart but it conveys the picture well.
From 1800, the cropland has more than tripled, close to quadrupled, while population has grown over 8 times. The grazing area has also quadrupled in the meanwhile
Perhaps the interesting fact here is that over the two decades ending 2021, cropland (both permanent crops and temporary crops) grew by 6% while pastureland reduced. As another chart shows, this has no correlation with cattle, just perhaps how it is farmed has changed, the ‘intensification of rearing’ FAO calls it.
Overall, against each person on earth, there is around 0.2 hectares of average cropland, this number has come down from 0.25 hectares in 2000. Farming provides not just food, but things like cotton, paper, sugar, coffee, tea, fuel, oil.
The top countries with cropland: India tops the list with close to 170 million hectares as cropland, followed by USA with 160 million hectares. China, 130 million hectares is next followed by Russia’s 125 million hectares. Brazil with 65 million hectares, Indonesia with 55 million hectares, Nigeria and Argentina, both a little over 40 million hectares, Canada and Ukraine just under 40 million hectares.
b) History of Agriculture
Settling to agriculture was one of the first changes to the humankind that had existed for millions of years as hunter-gatherers. But 12,000 years ago, cultivation of land began. And since then, until a couple of centuries ago, agriculture was the key occupation for human beings.
Agriculture has been the key occupation of human beings for most of their settled history. It has affected the human organisation, living systems, social and community groupings, and is the bedrock on which finer aspects of culture and civilization are built. It has shaped civilization, or it is the root around which civilization has grown. Then over the last few centuries, beyond agriculture, beyond global trade and discovery, beyond artisans and craftsmen and skilled labour, came the time of inventions and industrialization. This has affected agriculture too. Starting 500-600 years ago, new crops were introduced in different parts of the world, followed by selective breeding and technological advancements over the next few centuries. Last century brought electricity, chemicals (pesticides and fertilizers) and genetic engineering to the farms.
This change has happened alongside the change of rural-urban mix of human population, and farming has changed from subsistence provider, or first food (as a foundational needs provider), then income, to like any other industry, a business enterprise.
(Source – https://www.behance.net/gallery/44560769/History-of-Agriculture-Infographic)
(If interested in reading further about how land, labour and life changed over recent centuries, this craft open workbook and fiction reading list – outcome of chat with AI)
c) Agriculture, GDP & labour
The total global GDP is close to USD 90 trillion (2022). Share of agriculture is around 4.4% (USD 4 trillion).
And yet, employment wise, it employs 26% of global workforce or 892 million people (compared to 40% in 2000 or 1 billion people). Perhaps hence:
“Agriculture doesn’t just feed people, it is also one of the most powerful tools to end extreme poverty and boost economies. Growth in agriculture remains 2-3 times more effective at reducing poverty than an equivalent amount of growth generated in other sectors, and the effects are largest for the poorest in society.”
The relative share of agriculture in global GDP has declined, but in absolute terms, agriculture has grown from $3.1 trillion in 2014 to $4 trillion in 2023. Meanwhile, global GDP has grown leaps and bounds since WWII driven by industrial expansion, opening of the global markets, and more recently, the software and internet world.
In terms of largest agricultural output globally,
- China tops the list with close to $950 billion output, but it forms 6.8% of its GDP
- India is next with $381 billion output, and 16.4% of its GDP.
- Both of these are also the most populous countries in the world and have a large proportion of their workforce engaged in farming activities. In China, ~27% employed by agriculture, and in India, 44%.
- For US, agriculture is $205 billion contribution to GDP, at 0.9%, less than 1.5% of workforce employed in agriculture for this level of output. For most developed countries, agriculture contributes sub 2% of their GDP (Japan, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia)
- Indonesia contributes $ 135.5 billion or 12.6% of its GDP through agriculture. ~31% of its workforce is employed by agriculture.
- Nigeria contributes $83.4 billion or 20.4 % of . 37% of its workforce is employed by agriculture.
- For Brazil, $74.7 billion contribution to GDP, with 5.6% contribution to GDP. 9.39% of the workforce employed by agriculture.
For countries in Asia, agriculture is still a mainstay for many homes. And so in Africa.
(Source: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20113359098)
Human Activity “Spaces”
To contextualise this better, lets look at a range of human activity “spaces” in the world, the key sectors of operation:
(Data in this table collated by AI assitance. Directional reference only)
Labour in agriculture
India and China have the largest agricultural labour force, 272 million in India and 229 million in China, alarge portion of both their population. If one were to look at the world map though, Africa stands out as the proportion of labour force still employed by agriculture.
(Source – https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/agricultural-workers-by-country/)
The number of people employed in farming has something to do with farm sizes as well. Per another estimate, there are 570- 616 million farms in the world. But farm sizes can be very different. See chart below.
Most (84%) of the world’s 570 million farms are smallholdings; that is, farms less than two hectares in size.Many smallholder farmers are some of the poorest people in the world. Tragically, and somewhat paradoxically, they are also those who often go hungry.
Average farm size decreased in most low- and lower-middle-income countries for which data are available from 1960 to 2000, whereas average farm sizes increased from 1960 to 2000 in some upper middle-income countries and in nearly all high-income countries
This is the picture now. But going into future, by studying current trends, it seems that as economies grow, and become wealthier, the farm numbers decline, especially as migration out of rural areas results is lower numbers managing the farms. Some sources preduct that farm numbers will fall from 616 million to 272 million by 2100. The numbers will halve but the farm sizes will be bigger. It has both pros and cons, on one hand ease, efficiency, better usage of technological improvements on a larger area. On the other hand, it affects natural diversity.
The other related discussion is about yield, family income and farm sizes. This is further discussed in the final section in this post. But first a look at the shape and features of global agriculture
d) Top crops
Global agricultural production of primary crops is c. 9.9 billion tonnes in 2023, c. 60% more than year 2000. Meanwhile the world population grew from 6.1 billion to 8 billion (~30% growth). Crops are mostly used as food for people, feed for animals/cattle, or processed into a range of different products from oil to cosmetics.
The disproportionate growth is mainly answered by animal feed growth (meat production grew 55% between 2000 and 2022).
The top crops are:
“Cereals are the leading group of primary crops produced worldwide, with 3.1 billion tonnes produced in 2023 followed by sugar crops (2.3 billion tonnes), vegetables (1.2 billion tonnes), oil crops (1.2 billion tonnes), fruit (1 billion tonnes) and roots and tubers (0.9 billion tonnes).”
Maize, wheat, rice and sugarcane account for half of the global crop production.
Amongst cereals, Maize is the highest production of 1.2 billion tonnes, Rice next at 800 million tonnes, Wheat 799 million tonnes. Although maize forms the highest production, in terms of the cereal consumed by human beings, rice tops the tally. In sugar crops, sugarcane is the top crop with global volume over 2 billion tonnes. Amongst roots, potatoes and cassava (total 720 million tonnes), and amongst fruits, banana (139 million tonnes), amongst vegetables, tomatoes (192 million tonnes) lead the lists. Amongst oil crops, oil palm fruit (409 million tonnes) and soyabean (371 million tonnes) top the list.
And if one is wondering, for comparison, world coffee production is c.11 million tonnes and tea production is c.7 million tonnes. And the world produced 340 million tonnes of meat in 2023 (chicken, cattle, pig, sheep and goat mostly).
In terms of the key producing countries – US is the largest producer of Corn, followed by China. India is the largest producer of rice followed by China. And China is the largest producer of Wheat followed by India. Brazil and India lead the production of sugar crops.
(Source -https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/what-is-the-worlds-biggest-cash-crop/ )
e) Yield Improvement
Increasing yields has been one of the features of agriculture for the last 60 years. It has allowed output to grow without proportionate increase in farmland to feed the growing world.
“Since the early 1960s, global crop production has increased by over 250%. Only a tenth of the overall increase in crop production (including crops used for food, feed, fiber, and fuel) came from an expansion of cropland area. The bulk of the growth, came from growth in aggregate yield—total crop output per unit area per year.”
(Source – https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/drivers-of-increasing-global-crop-production-a-decomposition-analysis)
To read the above chart well:
“Pure yield (the biggest factor ~ 63% of the total growth) pinpoints the ability of farmers to leverage technology to produce as many crops as possible on as little land as possible, with much of this progress coming from high- and upper-middle-income countries. The remaining 37% of aggregate yield is divided among the other three factors. Cropping intensity, or the average frequency per year with which each hectare of cropland is harvested. For example, planting and harvesting two crops of rice per year would imply a cropping intensity of 2, whereas leaving a field fallow every other year would imply a cropping intensity of 0.5. Increased cropping frequency contributed 23% of the increase in aggregate yield. Shifts in crop composition drove up aggregate yields by 19%. This means that the world overall shifted towards relatively higher-yielding crops, especially sugar cane, palm oil, corn, and soybeans. A larger share of high-yield crops means greater output per hectare. Country share has contributed negatively – what this means in practice is that, in the last few decades, crop production has generally shifted to countries with lower yields.”
To understand this level of yield improvement, important to understand Green Revolution. Agriculture scientist Norman Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts on Green Revolution. It is the period during 60s and 70s when farmers started using high yielding varieties, pesticides, fertilisers, irrigation, mechanization. It transformed agriculture around the world, in developed countries as well as in India, China, Brazil. Effectively, targeted initiatives were taken around the world to improve agricultural yields.
If compared across crops, the following is the yield improvement
And still, just as a pointer, yields can be very different between countries. See for example following corn from 2007:
f) Milk, Eggs & Meat
Lets consider milk. It is the largest category of animal food consumed, at 783 million tonnes. India (127 million tonnes) and United States (103 million tonnes) are the two largest producers of raw cattle milk. Followed by China, Brazil, and Germany (34-42 million tonnes). Both India and China have seen high growth in this segment.
World eggs production is close to 97 million tonnes. This has shown a very high increase from 2010, of 41%. China is the largest producer and consumer of eggs.
In terms of meat, the world produces over 350 million tonnes, this number is triple the volume fifty years ago. “Chicken, pig, cattle, sheep and goat were the most produced meats between 2010 and 2023, accounting for 92 percent (340 million tonnes) of the total meat production in 2023.“
Until some years ago, pig meat was the largest category, now poultry is almost the same size as pig meat. China is the top producer of pig meat, way larger than any other country, accounting for over 45% of global production. China is the largest producer of poultry meat as well, followed closely by USA and then Brazil. USA and Brazil are the largest producers of Beef and Buffalo meat.
Perhaps interesting to note here is the amount of food needed to produce some of these animal food products.
The yield improvements across other areas have occured here as well. One of the features here worth discussing is the changing weight of the meat per animal. It has increased to 1.7 kg per animal in 2023 from under 1.5 kgs in 2010. The yield has grown in milkm and eggs as well. “These trends highlight the persistent intensification of farming practices, bringing concerns over the sustainability of animal breeding and meat quality.”
Land for Animal Products vs Land for Farming
To further contextualise the above, following is a snapshot of the land that is used for animal products vs land for farming.
“As you can see in the chart below, the food produced on this land only contributes about 40% of the world’s protein and just 18% of the world’s calories. This shows the problem: meat production is a particularly inefficient way of using land for food production.”
And to just grasp of the scale of the operations we are talking about. (Much of Earth’s animal and bird biomass is around human existence now).
g) Trade
It is estimated that 20% of calories consumed in the world have crossed at least one border.
Agricultural production has also become much more international. Historically, food production was localized everywhere: farmers produced food for their families or communities. Even when food trade became more widespread, it was mostly limited to domestic markets.
Now, large amounts of food are traded internationally. This has made diets across the world much more diverse, and can also provide an important source of income (from ‘cash crops’) for farmers. This is particularly true in lower-income countries.
The following chart gives an efficient snapshot of the global agricultural trade.
(Source: https://andamanpartners.com/2025/07/global-agriculture-producing-and-trading-the-worlds-food-and-strategic-implications-for-agri-businesses/)
From a demand perspective, the improvement in living standards has led to a trend towards diversification and personalization in agricultural product demand, which is particularly pronounced in populous countries, where the growth rate and structural changes in agricultural product demand are significant.
From a supply perspective, agricultural production is not only constrained by uncertain factors such as climate change but is also greatly influenced by policy. Adjustments in import and export policies could directly impact the international trade of agricultural products and the domestic market supply.
(Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05341-6#Fig1)
Some features of this trade network:
Core countries in the agricultural trade network exhibit a certain degree of stability, primarily concentrated in Western and a few Asian countries. This reveals an imbalance in global agricultural trade, where a small number of countries dominate, while others occupy more peripheral positions. In particular, countries like the United States, France, and Germany play a brokerage role in multiple agricultural product categories, giving them greater influence in the global agricultural supply chain. This imbalance is also observed in international trade markets for semiconductors, crude oil, and fossil fuels. The trade imbalance is mainly due to the stronger economic foundation, industrial capacity, and more mature political and economic systems of core countries, enabling them to maintain central positions in international trade consistently.
h) Fertilizers and Pesticides
Fertilizers have played an essential role in feeding a growing global population. It’s estimated that just under half of the people alive today are dependent on synthetic fertilizers.
Pesticides.
Pesticides are substances that are used to control and protect crops against pests. This includes herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other substances used to control other types of pests.
Pesticides, in various forms, have been used for millennia in agriculture. It was common for ancient agricultural societies to use naturally occurring elements such as sulfur, arsenic, or mercury to poison crop pests. Today, pesticides are often produced synthetically and designed to target specific organisms.
(Source: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20113359098)
i) Water Use
The crops are watered through rain that falls or throiugh irrigation which diverts water from freshwater resources. Globally, agriculture is the largest withdrawer of fresh water resources – upto 70%.
Of the global crop production of 9.2 billion metric tons, only 34% is through irrigated agriculture. Rest, 66% is rainfed. Both are vulnerable to weather changes.
Irrigated crops, which make up 34% of the world’s total production by weight, are vulnerable to increasing competition over shared water supplies, known as water stress. Water stress is considered “high” if at least 40% of the local water supply is used to meet demands from farms, industries, power plants and households. About 60% of the world’s irrigated crops (by weight) are currently grown in areas facing high or extremely high levels of water stress.
Please consider the following infographic for the snapshot of water we eat.
Source: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2023/07/26/water-in-agriculture
The annual amount of available freshwater resources per person has declined by more than 20 percent in the past two decades
Source: https://www.wri.org/insights/growing-water-risks-food-crops
Perhaps what is very interesting is many developed countries of the world rely on rain-fed agriculture, given the environmental conditions which allow this to happen.
j) Vegetable Oil and Sugar
Perhaps a look at oil and sugar helps in understanding the plantation crops a little better. Worth noting is the significant increase in vegetable oil consumption in the world which has led or has been led by changes in the way certain countries have shifted agricultural production to oil crops.
Sugarcane by volume is the largest crop in the world. Brazil and India are two large producers.
k) Food, Poverty, Wastage, Value-added
Then, before closing these, these two SDGs- hunger and poverty and the wastage in the food and agriculture space. Juxtaposing them, and then considering all the above, one understands that there is a lot yet to be done in this fundamental sector. There are multiple objectives on both front taken by Sustainable Devlopment goals.
Agricultural intensification and enhanced resilience to water stress through irrigation development is a widely discussed approach for achieving food security (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)2), climate action (SDG13), and poverty reduction (SDG1) in smallholder-dominated poverty hotspots such as the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of South Asia.
Transforming the poverty status of most smallholder farmers in the EGP requires diversified portfolios of rural on- and off-farm income-generating opportunities. While bolstering food- and climate security, agronomic intervention programs should consider smallholders’ limited monetary incentives to invest in intensification. Irrigation-led agricultural intensification programs and policies should explicitly account for the heterogeneity in household resources, irrigation levels, and degree of dependence on agricultural income.
While the farmland consolidation expected under structural transformation has occurred in high income countries, average farm sizes are decreasing across developing regions. Clearly, more is driving farm size than simply economic growth. Most smallholders struggle for viability in terms of earning a living income from farming alone.
To be clear: small farms produce one-third of the world’s food. Family farms – of any size – produce 80%. These terms should not be used interchangeably because they are very different.
Also consider this now:
FAO estimates the gross value of global (primary) agricultural production at just over $5 trillion. The World Bank estimates (primary) agricultural value-added at about $3.2 trillion. The contribution of the food industry and food services sectors is difficult to estimate because of lack of reliable data , but we estimate that the food system generates 2 to 5 times as much value as farm production itself. We know for example that in the United States, for every $1 spent on food by the US consumer, a mere 11 cents are accounted by economic activity on farms while the rest accrues to numerous activities associated with transforming, delivering, or – increasingly- preparing the food Americans enjoy on a daily basis. The same is true in the United Kingdom where agriculture accounts for only 10 percent of the value of the food system. Since the post-farm to farm ratio of value in the food system is much lower in developing countries, we estimate the value of the global food system at roughly $8 trillion.
Additionally, there are corporates:
Corporates play a big role in certain agricultural sectors and down the value chain. For example, consider this snapshot of US.
Corporates control some of the peripheral activities – the chemical industries, the seeds industry, the ‘intense agriculture’ of meat and then the downstream of all plantations.
*
Although the primary agriculture sector is small in global GDP, there is a lot of value add down the line on food products. One of the ways of capturing better value for farmers is to shift some of these value added industries in their domain, in rural areas and with them receiving the benfits of all the value thus generated. This is more a policy discussion, about providing the seed capital, grants and subsidies to such enterprise, because corporates search for profits will not by itself solve this.
The idea of this note is to understand and appreciate the way agriculture is organised around the world. It is a vast subject, this, an early attempt to gather together some key basic facts.
For general deep dive, following read is helpful: https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/8dde9b01-6771-45bc-ad39-cf194b616f9f/content