Historical evolution of barley area, production, and yield (1870–2024)
摘要
This study compiles a global historical time series of barley harvested area, production, and yield from 1870 to 2024. Three periods could be distinguished based on segmented regressions: P1 (1870–1950), the industrialization of both beer and livestock sectors in Europe and North America led to an increase in the global area and production sown with barley (from 32 Mha and 26.4 Mt in the 1870s, to 42.5 Mha and 44.5 Mt in the 1910s). P2 (1951–1979), after 1951 there was a global yield increase based on breeding and improved agronomic management, leading to a production growth (for both animal feed and beer). There is a period of increasing area too, especially from the 1960s to the 1980s, reaching an all-time high of 83.7 Mha in 1979. P3 (1980–2024), from 1980 onwards, barley area experienced a gradual decline amidst set-aside policies in developed countries, fierce competition with wheat and maize, and the effects of the Soviet Union dissolution. Anyway, production reached all-time highs of 177.2 and 179.1 Mt in 1986 and 1990, respectively. Since 2010, the global area has had c. 50 Mha, with a production of nearly 150 Mt and a yield of c. 3 t ha−1. Major historical producers were Russia, Germany, the USA, Canada, France, and the UK, with varied trends observed in area, production, and yield across different countries. Understanding barley’s historical trajectory reveals both the resilience of the crop and the pressures shaping temperate cereal systems under 19th–twenty-first century transformations.