The world is on track for record harvests this year
What do the latest projections expect for global food production and yields of different crops?
It’s not uncommon for people to tell me that global food production is already collapsing due to climate change. They are then surprised to hear that we typically hit record harvests year after year (even as things get hotter).1
But there are large and genuine risks of climate change to agriculture — I’ve written about this a lot, and it is probably my biggest concern when it comes to climate impacts — and there’s no guarantee that rising productivity continues.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tracks agricultural conditions across the world and publishes monthly updates on its outlook for production and yields for the year. I check this often to see how things are looking.
I posted an update on this last year, so here is the 2025 version.
The data I’m relying on for this summary is the USDA projections for the year based on its latest update (September 2025).
Note: These are projections based on the latest assessment of growing conditions and planting areas. For various reasons, this could change in the next few months.
Corn, wheat, soybeans and rice are on track for record harvests
Here’s the total amount of staple crops the world has produced since 1960. The last year — 2025 — is the USDA’s latest projection.
Most crops, with the exception of sorghum and millet, have seen steady increases over the past 60 years, and that trend is expected to continue this year.
Corn (maize) and wheat, in particular, have seen large increases this year. Soybeans are also expected to see a record. For rice, the rise is very small — basically the same output as last year (which was also a record).
Sorghum and millet — lesser-known but important staple crops in the tropics — continue with their regular pattern, fluctuating up and down without much sustained growth at all. This is concerning for food security, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the chart below, I’ve zoomed in on production figures since 2000 to see the recent data more clearly.
Again, you see the very large jump for corn in 2025; a reasonable jump for wheat, but much smaller increases for soybean and rice.
Global yields of staple crops are also expected to reach an all-time high
It’s also important to look at crop yields. Producing more food from higher yields means using less land for farming (and the benefits that come with it), and it also means better returns for farmers.
Corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice are all expected to see record yields this year. You can see this in the chart below.
Again, the jump for corn and wheat is fairly substantial. However, the rise in soybeans and rice is also more noticeable this time. Their increase in production was extremely marginal, so the fact that yields have increased quite a bit means that the area of soybean and rice crops planted is down from the previous year.
Again, you can see how poor the yields for sorghum and millet are. These are crops that have not received the same R&D investment as others, and it shows.
Here’s the data, just from the year 2000, which makes the recent changes easier to see.
What’s happening with non-staple crops: oils, cotton and coffee?
What about some other key crops that aren’t cereal or pulse staples?
Here — as you might expect for a wide range of crops — the picture is a bit more mixed. Below, I’ve shown the production figures for some oilseed crops, such as sugar, coffee, and cotton.
Rapeseed, palm oil, and coffee are all on track for record harvests. Sunflowerseed, cotton, and sugar are not.
As you can see, production figures fluctuate quite a bit from year to year, partly due to changes in weather conditions (i.e. supply) and changes in the market (i.e. demand).
Again, these are current projections to the end of the year, and subject to change. But the current data points towards strong agricultural output this year.
This summary of global food production obviously doesn’t reflect farming conditions and output everywhere. The USDA provides more in-depth coverage of countries or regions where production is up and where it’s down from previous years.
Large disruptions in national or regional production can occur without major changes to global production. This is one reason why a global interconnected food system can be much more resilient than local ones. Every year, some farmers get extremely poor harvests. But these losses can often be balanced out with surpluses elsewhere. This is very different from our food systems of the past, when a bad harvest inevitably meant hunger.
This is because even as increased temperatures have negative impacts on some crops, other improvements and enhancements in crop production have outpaced many of those impacts.
Cool! Hey I wonder why potato is rarely included in these. At some 400 MT, it is a far more important source of calories than Sorghum or Millet, though not a cereal.
"It’s not uncommon for people to tell me that global food production is already collapsing due to climate change. They are then surprised to hear that we typically hit record harvests year after year (even as things get hotter). [ AND YET....DESPITE ALL THE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY ............they PERSIST with their nonsensical "beliefs" ......and "our ability to adapt and survive "! ]
But there are large and genuine risks of climate change to agriculture — I’ve written about this a lot, and it is probably my biggest concern when it comes to climate impacts — and there’s no guarantee that rising productivity continues" [ EXCEPT OF COURSE ,that it ALWAYS does continue to improve , and with higher yields from ever smaller land areas under cultivation !
That's human innovation , inventiveness and persistence for you !!!]
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So Hannah , it's about time that YOU REVISED your "doom and gloom" predictions and began to QUESTION YOUR OWN "BELIEFS" . Cold is "our" enemy ! Warmth is "our" friend !
Carbon Dioxide is "plant food" and plants are "food for animals" and "we humans" eat both !
Carbon Dioxide is THE BUILDING BLOCK for all lifeforms on planet Earth , and increases in CO2 and "slight warming" have ALL BEEN BENEFICIAL so far ! .As the planet warms , due to the cyclical climate change warming , a NATURAL EVENT , the ocean "degasses" some of the dissolved CO2
into the air and the atmospheric CO2 content increases........the warmth ALWAYS PRECEDES AND CAUSES THE CO2 INCREASE.....not the other way around ! This increased CO2 level is stimulating and 'fertilising' all the plants.....and the entire planet is "greening" as a result ! More OXYGEN from the plant life [ some from terrestrial plants but most from marine plants ! ] as to removes the carbon fron the CO2 molecules to create "food" for itself using sunlight [ photosynthesis ] and water , in the form of sugars and starches ! Miraculous really !! Solar power at it's best !!
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First, what is an ice age? It’s when the Earth has cold temperatures for a long time – millions to tens of millions of years – that lead to ice sheets and glaciers covering large areas of its surface.
We know that the Earth has had at least five major ice ages. The first one happened about 2 billion years ago and lasted about 300 million years. The most recent one started about 2.6 million years ago, and in fact, we are still technically in it. [ We still have ICE at both poles and
on most of the HIGH MOUNTAINS ....even in the TROPICS ! ].
So why isn’t the Earth covered in ice right now? It’s because we are in a period known as an “interglacial.” In an ice age, temperatures will fluctuate between colder and warmer levels. Ice sheets and glaciers melt during warmer phases, which are called interglacials, and expand during colder phases, which are called glacials.
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Right now we are in the most recent ice age’s warm interglacial period, which began about 11,000 years ago.Almost all hominins disappeared during the Ice Age. Only a single species survived. “It’s not that we had something these extinct hominins lacked,”
“It’s that we used those skills differently.”
"But H. sapiens had appeared many millennia prior to the Ice Age, approximately 200,000 years before, in the continent of Africa....That said, approximately 70,000 to 60,000 years ago, in the midst of the Ice Age, our species started to spread throughout the planet for a variety of potential reasons. .......We moved into flourishing forests and arid, dry deserts."
'"[ It was ] found that the body temperatures of non-mammaliamorph synapsids were around
24-29⁰C, similar to extant lizards, but jumped by 5-9⁰C in mammaliamorphs around 233 million years ago, during the Late Triassic.
This pushes the date for the evolution of endothermy later than anticipated."
With a body temperature of approximately 37 degrees Celsius , we mammals . humans , are a relative new-comer to the world-stage ! "Humans, as anatomically modern Homo sapiens, have existed for about 300,000 years, with the oldest known fossils found in Africa dating to that time. While our lineage of human ancestors diverged from chimpanzees about 6 to 8 million years ago, and complex behaviors like tool-making appeared millions of years ago, the species Homo sapiens is a relatively recent development in human history."....but has been around long enough to experience and SURVIVE at least ONE COMPLETE CYCLE of an ICE AGE ......and it is cyclical ....meaning , IT WILL RECUR !!! That is the ONE SURE THING about climate change ! It changes !!
"In the last 300,000 years, Earth has experienced at least two major glaciations (or glacial periods) within the ongoing Quaternary Ice Age, which started about 2.58 million years ago. These glacial periods, characterized by extensive ice sheets, were separated by warmer interglacial periods." .
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"Overall, changing climate conditions provided our species an opportunity to perfect our biggest and best skills — our communication and willingness to make our mark on the world. And when we emerged from the frost, our species only improved upon those talents. When the world thawed about 11,700 years ago, humans began banding together to cultivate crops and create settlements for the first time, forming the foundations for the first civilizations.
The CYCLICAL "warming phase" of this INTER-GLACIAL PERIOD is the coolest of all them so far , and the WORLD is actually getting COLDER , and if this continues , then it is entirely possible that the ONCOMING PHASE OF THIS CURRENT ICE-AGE will be the COLDEST and the most severe and
that "civilisation" and "mankind" as we know it will today will JOIN THE OTHER 99.9% OF ALL THE LIFE FORMS THAT HAVE BEEN EXTINGUISHED ON THIS PLANET !
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So Hannah , "eat , drink and be merry , for tomorrow we die ".......but let's enjoy ourselves in the meantime ! Let "us" all celebrate the 'accident of birth' that has enabled us to live in such a truly pleasant and abundant and convivial time !