During the 20th Century, rapid increases in agricultural productivity enabled global supply to grow faster than demand, enhancing food security for a growing world population. A recent slowdown in productivity growth in many countries may signal an end to the era of ever-increasing agricultural abundance and changes in international comparative advantage.

Crop yields and other measures of partial factor productivity in agriculture indicate a significant slowdown in agricultural productivity growth in the most recent 10-20 years, especially in more-developed, high-income economies. Latin America and China are important exceptions to a general global agricultural productivity slowdown.

During the 20th Century, technological innovations transformed the relationship between agricultural inputs and outputs and contributed to rapid increases in agricultural productivity. U.S. agricultural productivity increased by 2.02% per year over 1949–1990, but by only 0.97% per year over 1990–2002. This slowdown in productivity growth is statistically significant.

Canadian agriculture has greatly evolved over the past century. It is now dominated by many fewer, much larger, and more specialized farms. Crop yields and total factor productivity have grown moderately. Since 1990, crop productivity lagged, reflecting stagnant agricultural R&D, but livestock productivity on the prairies advanced, mainly because of scale economies.

This paper presents measures of the productivity performance of Chinese agriculture during the past 30 years. Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth for staple commodities rose around 2% annually; TFP growth for other commodities was even higher. If relatively rapid TFP growth continues into the future, China’s farmers can meet the domestic demand for food in the decades ahead.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, agricultural productivity changed substantially in the Former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. This paper documents these changes in agricultural performance, identifies several "patterns" of productivity changes and relates these patterns to differences in initial conditions and reform policies.