Is The Global Distribution of Crops Optimised for Climate

Nov 07, 2022

Agriculture is a vital part of human development. However, global warming is impacting crop yields, and land conversion for food production is one of the most important drivers of nature loss. Smart planning, adaptation, and optimisation of agricultural practices are therefore crucial to ensuring a sustainable future for both people and the planet.

Which crops are grown where depends on many environmental, historical, socio-economic, cultural and technological factors, including the areas of origin of crop species, climatic, topographic, and soil conditions, access to fertilizers and irrigation, and human migrations and trade. But to what extent are agricultural systems and crop distributions optimised around the world?

A new studyled by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, with the participation of experts at UNEP-WCMC, has analysed the relationship between the global distribution of major food crops and the climate suitability of where they are grown to ensure good yields. 

The analysis focused on twelve of the most important global crops: maize, rice, barley, cassava, peanut, wheat, sunflower, sugar beet, soybean, sorghum, potato, and rapeseed. Combining a wide range of environmental, agricultural, and socio-economic data with a statistical modelling framework, they compared the distribution and yield of each of these crops across different climatic conditions.

Overall, crop distribution matches climate suitability for good crop yield across high-income world regions, although the relationship between the locations where each crop species is grown and the suitability of these locations to maximise their production is tremendously variable. Mismatches arise across large areas, especially in low-income regions. The analysis shows regions where climatic suitability is high for productivity, but small fractions of the land are cultivated. In these areas, the sustainable expansion of certain crops could result in an increase in their harvests at a global level. On the other hand, it also identifies cases where the number of hectares harvested is disproportionately large in relation to the climatic suitability of the site for that crop, and therefore changes in agricultural planning could result in increased and more sustainable production. 

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.