Global Opportunities for Enhancing Yield and Reducing Environmental Costs of Agriculture.

Humanity is facing the twin challenges of increasing global food production and reducing the environmental impacts of our agricultural practices.  Perhaps the most promising approach to solving this grand challenge is to "freeze the footprint" of agriculture to existing croplands, and develop revolutionary techniques to increase yields, while decreasing environmental impacts from irrigation, fertilizer use, and tillage.  Here we present a detailed, global-scale analysis of current crop yields (for > 150 crops, on a 9 km x 9 km spatial grid), yield gaps (compared to potential yields realized from other regions with similar climate and soil conditions), and current fertilizer and irrigation practices.  This work highlights that particular regions of the world have tremendous opportunities to boost yields, with existing technology, while avoiding most of the environmental costs of agricultural intensification.  Furthermore, we will present a global framework for balancing yield performance and environmental costs, which we are actively turing into a decision-support tool for agricultural practitioners around the globe.