Why is sustainable productivity growth the right strategy?

1. Agricultural productivity is economic security infrastructure.

Just as the B7 emphasizes the critical importance of diversified, resilient supply chains for minerals and energy, agricultural systems deserve recognition as essential economic security infrastructure. Agricultural productivity growth can help secure that position—contributing to stable food and agricultural supplies while helping alleviate inflationary pressures that can destabilize economies. 

Unlike traditional infrastructure investments, agricultural productivity growth offers multiple dividends—enhanced food security, diversification, strengthened economic stability, and climate resilience. When agricultural systems are productive and supported by the appropriate policy frameworks, they can help absorb economic shocks, maintain stable prices during global disruptions, and provide reliable export earnings that strengthen national economic positions (Rada et al., 2023).

2. Markets are evolving, fast.

While meeting the food requirements of the current and growing population is a central concern, the demands of our agricultural systems are evolving today and will continue to do so as incomes rise and consumer preferences shift. Agriculture serves more than just food but also energy, textiles, pharma, and industrial inputs. A growing demand for natural, sustainably produced goods creates higher-value, diversified market opportunities for producers. Cotton is in, polyester is out.  

This is good news for our farmers! However, for farming operations to be viable in the long-term, they must be both efficient and diversified (Miller, 2025). If producers are to benefit from high-value, diversified opportunities, sustainable productivity growth is imperative. Furthermore, productivity growth creates more stable, predictable trade relationships while reducing the risk of export restrictions that can destabilize global markets (Anderson & Nelgen, 2012). While increased supply may moderate price levels, the reduction in price volatility and supply shocks creates more predictable market conditions for producers, consumers, and businesses. 

3. Because it’s the right strategy—regardless of the growth debate. 

Whether a country or region aims to increase yields or reduce inputs, sustainable productivity growth is a common ground. Importantly, a productivity growth strategy can serve food system transformation, agroecological, and local autonomy agendas.  It’s fundamentally about using our natural, technological, human, and financial resources more wisely. More output with less impact is a win for climate, economic development, and security (USDA OCE, 2025). However, trade-offs are real and must be actively managed through adaptive, evidence-based policy. 

4. Because it advances economic justice and reduces inequality.

Sustainable agricultural productivity growth has the potential to tackle economic disparities by increasing incomes for smallholder farmers—who represent some of the world’s most vulnerable populations—while simultaneously lowering food costs for low-income households. This dual benefit can create pathways out of poverty when the productivity growth strategy is coupled with targeted policies. Furthermore, by reducing the cost of nutritious food production, productivity growth makes healthy diets more accessible to marginalized populations, addressing both economic and food justice simultaneously. 

What do policymakers need know? 

At the farm level, TFP growth boosts farm income by increasing output or reducing input costs (O’Neill et al., 2005). However: 

• Scale matters.

  Larger farms in high-income countries often have better access to capital and tech, allowing them to capture greater income gains. Conversely, smallholders in low-income regions may achieve greater proportional income gains since producing more on limited land is the heart of the small-scale model (Svodobdová et al., 2022).  

• Specialization differs.

  Innovations and productivity-enhancing tools are more accessible in some sectors, such as grains, compared to others, such as livestock or horticulture. Accessibility may be related to the amount invested in R&D or the expense of the technologies (Fuglie, 2025).  

• Market dynamics count.

  As any freshman learns in introductory microeconomics, greater supply can suppress prices, which may in turn offset income gains. Global price volatility also plays a central role in producer income.  

• Policy makes a difference.

  Input subsidies, extension services, environmental regulations, and innovation investments all shape the path from productivity to profit. Importantly, environmental regulations impact production costs and can play a huge role in farm income (EC-USDA, 2025). 

Food Security 

TFP growth can contribute to improved food security through two mechanisms. First, by reducing the per-unit cost of agricultural production, TFP growth contributes to lower food prices. Second, increased productivity generally translates into higher incomes, thereby stimulating rural economies and increasing the available income that can be spent on food (USDA ERS, 2021). However, without policies addressing system and market failures—distribution inefficiencies, food loss and waste, income dynamics, and socio-economic inequalities—productivity gains may not translate into improved food security. TFP growth is necessary but not sufficient; complementary policies are essential. 

Enhanced food security, a direct and significant outcome of robust TFP growth, contributes fundamentally to overall social, economic, and geopolitical stability (Rosen et al., 2001). It reduces conflict by easing competition for scarce resources. But the reverse is also true: conflict devastates productivity growth through labor displacement, infrastructure destruction, and market disruption (Adeoye et al., 2023). A vicious feedback loop can form, where food insecurity feeds instability and vice versa. Intervening in regions at risk for conflict with a sustainable agricultural productivity growth strategy may help to reduce tensions and further escalation.   

Land 

TFP growth is inherently land-sparing—we can grow more on less land. That is vital for biodiversity protection and conservation. Gains in crop productivity have helped avoid 16 million hectares of land conversion and averted the extinction of more than 1,000 plant and animal species (Baldos et al., 2025). 

Under some conditions, higher productivity can drive short-term land expansion. Land tenure policies, land fragmentation, food prices, and weak risk management mechanisms can push farmers to expand cultivation (Zhang et al., 2024). Even spared lands may be lost to other development pressures—as seen in Ontario’s now-canceled Greenbelt plan to divert protected lands into housing development. Comprehensive land-use policies are essential.  

Environmental Protection and Biodiversity 

When properly managed, TFP growth can help lower emissions, improve water use, and minimize environmental impacts by reducing the intensity of input use per unit of output. Proven innovations—from gene-edited crops to precision ag—optimize yields while reducing pressure on ecosystems (Baldos & Hertel, 2024). However, the environmental outcomes depend critically on how productivity gains are achieved and whether they are coupled with environmental safeguards. 

While trade-offs exist, there are technological and policy solutions that can bring balance to agricultural and environmental systems. Some productivity tools may have environmental costs, depending on implementation and management. For example, increased use of enhanced fertilizers may still result in nutrient runoffs or cause N2O emissions. However, improving nutrient use efficiency with innovations such as precision placement or science-based biological technologies allows producers to capture the important productivity gains of enhanced fertilizers while minimizing environmental impacts. 

Policies, too, can create trade-offs or bring balance. For example, certain cover crops reduced the productivity of cash crops in some systems, depending on management practices and conditions (UNL, 2025). In the United States, cover crops are classified as conservation practices rather than commercial crops. To remain eligible for federal crop insurance on the next cash crop, producers must follow strict termination guidelines, which often prohibit harvesting cover crops for seed or sale. While conservation programs may offer payments for adopting these practices, more flexible policy frameworks that support dual-purpose cover crops—where feasible—could better align productivity and environmental goals, rather than forcing producers to choose between them. 

What’s the way forward? We need a balanced approach that protects the environment while supporting producer livelihoods and meeting the demands of our agricultural systems. Policies that ignore this complexity risk undermining progress on agricultural, environmental, and economic goals. 

Research priorities for the Security-Climate-Development Nexus of Sustainable Productivity Growth 

There are critical evidence gaps that need to be addressed to optimize policy frameworks that use sustainable productivity growth as a strategy to address economic security alongside climate and development goals. Context-specific research is key to designing effective interventions.  

• Economic Impact Assessment

  What are the macroeconomic effects of TFP growth across different economic contexts? How do productivity gains translate into broader economic resilience? 

• Supply Chain Security

  How can agricultural productivity improvements reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and economic dependencies? 

• Investment Returns

  What policy frameworks maximize private sector and environmental returns on agricultural productivity investments while delivering public economic security benefits? 

• Regional Economic Effects

  How do productivity-income dynamics vary across regions, ecosystems, and sectors, and what are the implications for economic development strategies? 

• Equity and Distributional Effects

  How do the benefits of TFP growth distribute across different scales of production, geographic regions, and socioeconomic groups? What policy mechanisms ensure that productivity gains contribute to economic justice rather than exacerbating inequalities? 

• Climate Resilience and Adaptation Pathways

  How can agricultural productivity growth strategies be designed to simultaneously build climate resilience, reduce emissions, and support adaptation in climate-vulnerable regions while maintaining economic viability? 

What’s the takeaway? 

Think incentives not prescriptions. Overly rigid policies constrain producers, reduce productivity growth, and provoke backlash. They fail to reflect the complexity of agri-food systems.  

Sustainable agricultural productivity growth is our best chance to align agricultural, economic, environmental, and social goals. While this strategy has the potential to unify economic security priorities with economic justice and sustainable development goals, its success depends on complementary policies that address distribution, access, and environmental outcomes. It is a necessary foundation for sustainable food systems, but not sufficient on its own without broader systemic reforms. Collaboration across sectors and ago-ideologies must unlock productivity-enhancing tools, practices, knowledge, and policies that: 

1. Keep farmers whole

2. Keep nutritious food on tables

3. Protect ecosystems

4. Fuel economic security

It’s a strategy that works for the prosperity of both people and planet. 

Jessica Agnew, PhD

Associate Director, CALS Global

Managing Editor, GAP Report

Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences