Data

Corn: Attainable crop yields

See all data and research on:

What you should know about this indicator

  • Attainable yields are more conservative than biophysical 'potential yields', but should be achievable using current technologies and management (e.g. fertilizers and irrigation).
  • Attainable yields are based on assessments for the year 2000. Real attainable yield pre-2000 may be lower; and post-2000 may be higher than these values.
Corn: Attainable crop yields
Attainable yields are estimates of feasible crop yields calculated from high-yielding areas of similar climate.
Source
Mueller et al. (2012) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 26, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1850–2023
Unit
tonnes per hectare

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Retrieved on
March 26, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Mueller, N., Gerber, J., Johnston, M. et al. (2012) - Closing yield gaps through nutrient and water management. Nature 490, 254-257. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11420

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Corn: Attainable crop yields”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2022) - “Crop Yields”. Data adapted from Mueller et al.. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maize-attainable-yield [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Mueller et al. (2012) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Mueller et al. (2012) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Corn: Attainable crop yields” [dataset]. Mueller et al., “Closing yield gaps through nutrient and water management” [original data]. Retrieved December 13, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maize-attainable-yield