One aspect of sustainability that is not as significant as perhaps it should be in the modern conversation about climate change as recycling, or solar and wind energy is the idea of agricultural efficiency. Data from 1991 to 2017 compared the output per worker in agricultural industries by country and found that sub-Saharan Africa is in comparison to European nations, and Asian nations less efficient at producing food. In constant 2010 dollars, the Congo put out $947 dollars and Tanzania put out $675 of agricultural output in the year 2017 and in comparison to Denmark and the UK each put out around $50 to $60000. That means that for every hectare of land in the UK approximately 7 tons of cereal(wheat, rice, barley etc.) was produced in comparison to sub-saharan Africa which produced about 1.6 tons of cereal per hectare of land. In Europe, since 1980 according to Our World in Data, the continent has been able to increase crop yields while maintaining on approximately 132 million hectares of land increasing their yields from that year to 2019 by 132% whereas in comparison Africa has increased their land use from 48 to 112 million hectares while their yield has increased .4 ton basis points from 1980-2019. While this data may not be surprising, it is an alarming statistic since Africa’s (across the entire continent) population is the fastest-growing population in the world with the least amount of educational attainment opportunities internally and the least productive population perhaps in a global comparative manner of analysis. Internally, some African nations like South Africa and Nigeria have been able to triple their agricultural GDP in this same time period. From these statistics, it’s clear that Africa is in an early period of classical growth so when thinking about how wealthier countries should consider their impact on less-developed nations, they should continue to work to improve to share technology and work to benefit not only the endogenous growth of their people but so too improve perhaps the environmental capabilities of certain regions as a byproduct of the positive externalities discovered by some nations.

Sources utilized:

https://ourworldindata.org/africa-yields-problem

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/agriculture-value-added-per-worker-wdi?tab=chart&time=1991..latest&country=ZAF~NGA

https://www.privacyshield.gov/article?id=Republic-of-Congo-Agricultural-Sector#:~:text=The%20Republic%20of%20Congo’s%20agricultural,gross%20domestic%20product%20(GDP).

https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/continents-by-population.php#:~:text=Middle%20Africa%20has%20highest%20rate,growing%20continent%20Oceania%20(1.27%25).