Over the past few decades, there has been a trend of decreasing fraction of value added by the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industries to global GDP. This trend is largely due to the increasing industrialization and modernization of many economies, which has led to a shift away from these traditional sectors and towards industries such as manufacturing, services, and technology.

Based on the data from the World Bank as of January 2023, there has been a small trend reversal since the bottom of 3.2% in 2006, to a final value of 4.3% in 2021, still down a lot from a recorded high of 10.6% in 1968.

| Year | % of valued added (% of GDP) | ||--| | 1971 | 9.3 | | 1981 | 7 | | 1991 | 4.6 | | 2001 | 3.4 | | 2011 | 4 | | 2021 | 4.3 |

Within the latest data, there has been substantial heterogeneity between countries of varying income levels. Changes in long-term trends may thus, at least in part, be understood as by varying levels of global GDP being represented by different income levels.

| Income Group | valued added (% of GDP) | | | | | Low income | 25.6 | | Lower middle income | 15.4 | | Low & middle income | 9.1 | | Middle income | 8.8 | | Upper middle income | 6.7 | | High income | 1.3 |

Some of these trends may also be explained by agricultural productivity growth. This is highlighted by a 2018 Global Food Security paper:

World-wide, agricultural output grew at an average annual rate of 2.54% during 2001–2014, faster than the 1961–2014 average rate of 2.24%.

United Nations data show declining use of land and employment in agriculture.

This has led to accelerated growth in productivity of these factors.

Declining growth rates in harvested yield have been offset by increased cropping intensity.

However, a 2021 Nature Climate Change paper investigated the impact of climate change on global agricultural productivity growth, finding that anthropogenic climate change “has reduced global agricultural TFP by about 21% since 1961, a slowdown that is equivalent to losing the last 7 years of productivity growth.” This may add further risks in the near and medium term that may not have been accounted for in some previous analyses.

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