Global Yield Gap and Water Productivity Atlas
Food security analysis: from local to global
Publication date: March 2021
How to use?
The Global Yield Gap and Water Productivity Atlas (GYGA) provides robust estimates of untapped crop production potential on existing farmland based on current climate and available soil and water resources.
Given limited land and water resources available for crop production and population soon to exceed 9 billion, ensuring food security while protecting carbon-rich and biodiverse rainforests, wetlands, and grasslands depends on our ability to increase current crop yields on existing farmland through sustainable intensification.
GYGA offers high-quality and locally relevant data on yield gap and agronomic data of key crops globally. This data management platform can support your strategic decision making and prioritization of investment. GYGA serves as a foundation for further studies on how to close yield gap in practice.
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Results from the atlas can serve for identifying regions with greatest potential for investment in agricultural development and technology transfer and to monitor impact over time. Likewise, the atlas provides essential information to assess the feasibility of a country to achieve food self-sufficiency through crop intensification and, if this cannot be achieved, for assessing how much extra land clearing or food import will be needed to meet future demand for food. The atlas is a foundation for studies aiming to explain and mitigate yield gaps and investigate impact of climate change, land use, and environmental footprint of agriculture.
GYGA is an international project requiring collaboration among agronomists with knowledge of production systems, soils, and climate governing crop performance in their countries. A standard protocol for assessing yield potential (Yp), water-limited yield potential (Yw), yield gaps (Yg) and water productivity (WP) is applied for all crops and countries based on best available data, robust crop simulation models, and a bottom-up approach to upscale results from location to region and country. GYGA aspires for global coverage of yield gaps for all major food crops and countries that produce them. The first phase of the project (2012-2015) focussed on cereal crops. Recently, the crop list has been extended with soybean, sugarcane and potato. Detailed maps and associated databases are displayed and available to download.
Results
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Estimation Of Global Yield Gaps And Implications From Their Analysis
International Fertiliser Society. Proceedings (2016)795. - ISSN 1466-1314 - 20 p. -
Kenya public weather processed by the Global Yield Gap Atlas project
ODjAR : open data journal for agricultural research 3 (2017). - ISSN 2352-6378 - p. 16 - 18. -
Kenya public weather processed by the Global Yield Gap Atlas project (revised version)
: Wageningen University & Research -
Kenya public weather processed by the Global Yield Gap Atlas project (old version)
: Alterra