Worldwatch Institute Reports Global Grain Production Down, But Recovering

• Between 1960 and 2010, annual global grain production increased from 643 million tons to 2.2 billion tons.
• U.S. maize (corn) production was down 5% in 2010 due to drought in the east and excessive rain in the west. The United States is the world's largest exporter of maize, accounting for 56% of global exports from 2006 to 2010.
• According to the FAO's Cereal Price Index (CPI), which uses 2002-04 prices for wheat, rice and maize as its baseline (100), food prices increased to an index level of 185 in August 2010 and set a record at 265 in April 2011.
• Forty percent of the global increase in maize prices in 2000-07 was due to worldwide demand for ethanol, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. Additional reasons for the jump in food prices include the weakening of the U.S. dollar, speculation on grain prices, and possible climate change impacts.

Stanford University researchers who created a model to determine how changing weather patterns affect crop yields found a 2.9% increase in global rice production as a result of greater precipitation, but losses of 3.8% for wheat and 2.5% for maize.