The world produced 9.9 billion tonnes of primary crops in 2023, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Add in 365 million tonnes of meat and hundreds of millions of tonnes of dairy, eggs, and seafood, and the total output of the global food system is staggering. By raw calories, the planet grows more than enough to feed every person alive. The problem has never been total volume; it’s distribution, waste, and what we choose to grow.
Total Crop Production by Category
That 9.9 billion tonne figure covers everything harvested from the ground: grains, fruits, vegetables, sugar crops, oilseeds, roots, and more. To put it in perspective, that works out to roughly 1.2 tonnes of crops per person on Earth each year. Here’s how the major categories break down.
- Cereals: The backbone of the global diet. Maize, wheat, and rice alone account for 91 percent of all cereal production. Output rose by 61 million tonnes (about 2 percent) between 2022 and 2023.
- Sugar crops: Sugarcane dominates, with over 2 billion tonnes produced in 2023. Sugar beet added another 281 million tonnes.
- Fruits and vegetables: Combined production hit 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023, up 1 percent from the previous year.
- Oil crops: Oil palm fruit, soybeans, and rapeseed together reached 893 million tonnes.
- Roots and tubers: Potatoes, cassava, and similar crops grew by 2 percent year over year.
A large share of these crops never reaches a dinner plate directly. Huge volumes of maize and soybeans, for instance, are grown as animal feed or processed into biofuels and industrial products. The gap between “food produced” and “food people eat” is wider than most people realize.
Meat and Livestock Production
Global meat production reached an estimated 365 million tonnes in 2024, a 1.3 percent increase over the prior year. Poultry drove most of that growth, with beef also contributing, while pork and sheep meat stayed roughly flat. By 2034, the OECD and FAO project world meat output will climb to about 406 million tonnes, a 13 percent jump from current levels.
Livestock production is resource-intensive in ways that crop farming is not. Raising animals for food requires land for grazing, land for growing feed crops, and enormous quantities of water. This is a key reason why agricultural land covers 4.76 billion hectares globally, roughly 32 percent of all land on Earth. A significant portion of that is permanent pasture dedicated to grazing rather than cropland growing food for people.
How Much Food That Equals Per Person
Calorie availability varies enormously depending on where you live. In the United States, the food system makes about 3,900 calories per person available each day. In Nigeria, that figure drops to around 2,470. The global average sits somewhere in between, generally estimated at about 2,900 to 3,000 calories per person daily. Since the average adult needs roughly 2,000 to 2,500 calories, the world technically produces a surplus.
That surplus is misleading, though. “Available” calories include food that spoils before anyone buys it, food that sits in a refrigerator until it’s thrown out, and food that’s lost during harvesting, processing, and transport. It also doesn’t account for unequal access. Hundreds of millions of people remain food insecure even while the global supply exceeds global need on paper.
How Much Gets Lost or Wasted
Roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted before it’s eaten. In the United States, that figure lands between 30 and 40 percent of the total food supply, with the USDA estimating 31 percent loss at the retail and consumer levels alone. That includes grocery stores discarding produce that doesn’t look perfect, restaurants preparing more than they serve, and households letting leftovers go bad.
In lower-income countries, the losses happen earlier in the supply chain. Poor refrigeration, limited storage infrastructure, and long distances between farms and markets mean crops spoil before they ever reach a store. In wealthier countries, the waste tilts heavily toward the consumer end. The result is the same: billions of tonnes of food grown, harvested, and processed for no one.
Land Use and Efficiency
Agriculture uses 4.76 billion hectares of land, an area that expanded by 7.6 percent between the mid-twentieth century and 2020. That’s a slower rate of expansion than you might expect given how much more food the world now produces, and the reason is productivity gains. Better crop varieties, fertilizers, irrigation, and farming techniques have allowed output to grow faster than the amount of land under cultivation.
This matters because the tension between feeding more people and preserving forests, wetlands, and biodiversity is one of the central challenges of modern agriculture. Producing more food per hectare reduces pressure to clear new land, but it often comes with tradeoffs: heavier fertilizer use, greater water consumption, and soil degradation over time.
Where Production Is Headed
Total use of agricultural and fisheries products is projected to grow by about 1 percent per year over the coming decade, with global food consumption specifically rising by 1.2 percent annually. Most of that growth will happen in low- and middle-income countries, driven by population increases and rising incomes that shift diets toward more meat, dairy, and processed foods.
The world already produces enough calories to feed 8 billion people. Whether it can sustainably scale to feed 9 or 10 billion by mid-century depends less on raw tonnage and more on reducing waste, improving distribution, and making smarter choices about which crops go to plates versus feed troughs and fuel tanks.