Figure 3. The effect of climate change on production increases through agricultural intensification.

The potential increases in global production of maize, wheat and rice that could be achieved by closing the yield gap (difference between actual and attainable yields) on current cropland are plotted for baseline, mid-century, and end-of-century climates (light green bars). For reference, these bars are imposed on top of actual production for ca. year 2000 (dark green bars), as calculated based on actual yields from Mueller et al.⁴ and cropland area from Monfreda et al.¹⁸.