Over the last five decades, the human population has grown more than twice. And it continues to increase exponentially. Meanwhile, the amount of arable land is decreasing every year. In many places around the world, there is a shortage of water and it is getting more and more difficult to find skillful workers to work in agriculture. All of this puts a strain on farmers to increase their productivity to meet those challenges. Every piece of land and every drop of water are getting more valuable.

However, advances in agricultural technology and increased agricultural productivity can help farmers to keep up with the global demand and introduce new more ecological and environmentally friendly agricultural practices. But what is agricultural productivity, how is it measured, and how can it be improved? We will discuss all of this in our article.

Agricultural productivity is a metric that represents the ratio of outputs to inputs. For instance, you can evaluate your operation’s productivity by comparing your product yield to the amount of land, seeds, water, time, and other resources that were used to achieve this yield.

There are several metrics experts use to evaluate agricultural productivity. The most common one compares the market value of all products that were created as a result of agricultural operations to the amount of land, man-hours, or money that were used to create this output. These metrics measure productivity only partially.

Another popular metric is total factor productivity (TFP). This is a ratio that compares the amount of output to all the inputs that were used in the operation. Increases in TFP are generally associated with the implementation of new farming technology.

Modern farmers often use specialized software to track the productivity of their farms. For instance, FieldBee farmers report using farm management software to keep track of agricultural productivity.

Here are a few things farmers can do to increase the productivity of their farms:

• Smarter irrigation – install modern irrigation systems to minimize the use of water and increase crop yields.
• Use nitrogen fertilizers – this can increase yields on your fields by over 30%.
• Choose heat and drought-resistant crops – selecting hardy crop varieties can improve yields by over 20% without additional investments.
• Implement conservation tillage – this technique can save you a significant amount of time and resources.
• Use farm management apps – this software can help you track all of your operations, record what resources were used, etc.
• Implement FieldBee autosteering technology – this will increase the precision of your machinery, decrease the amount of seeds and fertilizer you use, free up your hands for other tasks, and increase your profits by as much as 120 euro per hectare.

Agricultural productivity is a crucial metric used to evaluate farming efficiency, assess food security, and evaluate the state of the agriculture sector in a particular region. It’s crucial for every farmer to calculate their farm’s productivity and implement new technologies to continue minimizing running costs and increasing yields. New technologies such as precision farming, farm management applications can help farmers to increase agricultural productivity on their farm.