It is widely agreed that increased productivity, arising from innovation and changes in technology, is the main contributor to economic growth in U.S. agriculture. ERS data, research, and analyses quantify productivity improvements, the sources of improvement, and investigate the role of the public and private sectors in fostering U.S. agricultural productivity growth through research, education, infrastructure, and technological advances. Research on global agricultural productivity focuses on quantifying comparable productivity growth measures for countries and regions worldwide.

• ERS' productivity accounts provide estimates of productivity growth for the aggregate farm sector for the period 1948-2009, and estimates of the growth and relative levels of productivity for the individual States for the period 1960-2004. According to the statistics (see Agricultural Productivity in the U.S.), growth in farm sector output was due almost entirely to productivity growth over the post-war period.

• Empirical studies indicate high economic returns from the public's investment in agricultural research. (See the report, Economic Returns to Public Agricultural Research, EB-10, September 2007.)

• Models and data decompose the sources of growth in global agricultural output. Globally, productivity growth accounts for a rising share of the increase in agricultural production, easing pressure on natural resources to supply the rising demand for food and agricultural commodities (see the Amber Waves feature, Accelerating Productivity Growth Offsets Decline in Resource Expansion in Global Agriculture, September 2010).

Last updated: Tuesday, August 28, 2012

For more information contact: Eldon Ball and Sun Ling Wang