Our World
in Data
Data

Wheat yields

See all data and research on:
Crop Yields

What you should know about this indicator

  • In most of the cases yield data are not recorded but obtained by dividing the production data by the data on area harvested.
  • Data on yields of permanent crops are not as reliable as those for temporary crops.
Wheat yields
Harvested production per unit of harvested area for wheat.
Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023); Broadberry et al. (2015); Brassley (2000); Bayliss-Smith & Wanmali (1984) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 26, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1275–2022
Unit
tonnes per hectare

Related research and writing

Thumbnail

Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world’s wildlife?

Max Roser
legacy-wordpress-upload

Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century

Hannah Ritchie

Explore charts that include this data

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Crop and livestock statistics are recorded for 278 products, covering the following categories:

  1. Crops primary: Cereals, Citrus Fruit, Fibre Crops, Fruit, Oil Crops, Oil Crops and Cakes in Oil Equivalent, Pulses, Roots and Tubers, Sugar Crops, Treenuts and Vegetables. Data are expressed in terms of area harvested, production quantity and yield. Area and production data on cereals relate to crops harvested for dry grain only. Cereal crops harvested for hay or harvested green for food, feed or silage or used for grazing are therefore excluded.

  2. Crops processed: Beer of barley; Cotton lint; Cottonseed; Margarine, short; Molasses; Oil, coconut (copra); Oil, cottonseed; Oil, groundnut; Oil, linseed; Oil, maize; Oil, olive, virgin; Oil, palm; Oil, palm kernel; Oil, rapeseed; Oil, safflower; Oil, sesame; Oil, soybean; Oil, sunflower; Palm kernels; Sugar Raw Centrifugal; Wine.

  3. Live animals: Animals live n.e.s.; Asses; Beehives; Buffaloes; Camelids, other; Camels; Cattle; Chickens; Ducks; Geese and guinea fowls; Goats; Horses; Mules; Pigeons, other birds; Pigs; Rabbits and hares; Rodents, other; Sheep; Turkeys.

  4. Livestock primary: Beeswax; Eggs (various types); Hides buffalo, fresh; Hides, cattle, fresh; Honey, natural; Meat (ass, bird nes, buffalo, camel, cattle, chicken, duck, game, goat, goose and guinea fowl, horse, mule, Meat nes, meat other camelids, Meat other rodents, pig, rabbit, sheep, turkey); Milk (buffalo, camel, cow, goat, sheep); Offals, nes; Silk-worm cocoons, reelable; Skins (goat, sheep); Snails, not sea; Wool, greasy.

  5. Livestock processed: Butter (of milk from sheep, goat, buffalo, cow); Cheese (of milk from goat, buffalo, sheep, cow milk); Cheese of skimmed cow milk; Cream fresh; Ghee (cow and buffalo milk); Lard; Milk (dry buttermilk, skimmed condensed, skimmed cow, skimmed dried, skimmed evaporated, whole condensed, whole dried, whole evaporated); Silk raw; Tallow; Whey (condensed and dry); Yoghurt.

Retrieved on
March 14, 2024
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
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.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Production: Crops and livestock products (2023).
Retrieved on
March 26, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/british-economic-growth-12701870/A270234C137117C8E0F1D1E7E6F0DA56
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.
Broadberry, S., Campbell, B., Klein, A., Overton, M., & Van Leeuwen, B. (2015). British Economic Growth, 1270-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107707603
The data was manually extracted from Table 3.06 "Weighted national average crop yields per acre, gross of tithes and net of seed, 1270s-1860s (bushels; 10-year averages)".
The data in this table is based on the Medieval Accounts Database, the Early Modern Probate Inventories Database and the Modern Farm Accounts Database. Seed sown per acre from the Medieval and Modern Databases. Pulses for the modern period and all seeds sown for the early modern period are taken from Overton and Campbell (1996), Allen (2005).
Retrieved on
March 26, 2024
Retrieved from
https://bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/48n1a4.pdf
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.
Brassley, P. (2000) - Output and technical change in twentieth-century British agriculture. The Agricultural History Review, 60-84.
The data was manually extracted from from Table 4 "Crop yields, Great Britain (to 1914) / UK (tonnes per hectare)".
This data is based on the book "A hundred Years of British food and farming: a statistical survey", by H. F. Marks (ed. D. K. Britton, 1989).
Retrieved on
March 26, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/understanding-green-revolutions/761959C5635C85DB4C36E6B44C19A5EF
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.
Tim P. Bayliss-Smith and Sudhir Wanmali (1984) - Understanding Green Revolutions.
The data was manually extracted from Table 1.2 Wheat yields in Europe, 1850 to 1977-79 (100 kg/hectare).

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: Wheat yields”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2022) - “Crop Yields”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Broadberry et al., Brassley, Bayliss-Smith & Wanmali. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields [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:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023) and other sources – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023); Broadberry et al. (2015); Brassley (2000); Bayliss-Smith & Wanmali (1984) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Wheat yields” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Production: Crops and livestock products”; Broadberry et al., “Long-term crop yields in UK”; Brassley, “Long-term crop yields in UK”; Bayliss-Smith & Wanmali, “Understanding Green Revolutions” [original data]. Retrieved November 27, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields