ADAS, an environmental consultancy firm, has launched a Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) set up to foster and energise innovation in the arable industry, with the goal of understanding how  higher yields from the UK’s arable sector can be produced. 

In August 2012, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), responding to a request from the United Nations’ Committee on Food Security, asked experts from CGIAR’s 15 research centers to summarize the effects of climate change on 22 of the most important agricultural commodities and 3 critical natural resources in the developing world.

A new study finds that Tanzania is one developing country that could actually benefit from climate change by increasing exports of corn to the U.S. and other nations. The study, published in the Review of Development Economics, shows that Tanzania has the potential to substantially increase its maize exports and take advantage of higher commodity prices with a variety of trading partners due to predicted dry and hot weather that could affect those countries' usual sources for the crop.

This is taken from CCAF’S latest e-newsletter.  CCAFS is the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, a partnership between the Consultative Group on International Agricultural CGIAR and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP).

Another article that looks at organic versus conventional yields. It compares yields in both developed and developing world contexts and argues a. the case for a more nuanced approach to considering yield variations and b. for less dogmatism in the debate on sustainable agriculture.

This meta-analysis finds that yields in organic systems are on average 80% that of conventional yields.  This is an analysis at crop level but the researchers suggest that the yield gap could be higher at farm, regional or global level due to the dependence of organic farming on manure and on legumes for soil fertilisation, which in turn reduces yields at the overall system level.