With global agricultural productivity growth at its lowest rate in 50 years, the Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Initiative at Virginia Tech has launched GAP IQ, an open-access data intelligence platform designed to help governments, investors, researchers, and other decision-makers turn decades of agricultural data into actionable insights.
Developed by the GAP Initiative, housed within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), with Google Public Sector and Appnovation, GAP IQ brings productivity-related data into a single environment where users can examine trends, compare countries and regions, and ultimately model how investments and policy choices could affect agricultural productivity.
The platform launched alongside the 2026 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report, “Restarting Growth: The Role of Regenerative Agriculture in Productivity Growth and Profitability.”
Global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth — the ratio of agricultural outputs to inputs — averaged just 0.63 percent annually during the past decade, the lowest rate since the 1970s. Closing the widening shortfall requires average annual TFP growth of 2.10 percent through 2050, nearly four times the current rate.
“The productivity growth trends in this report describe a system that is buying its output growth rather than earning it,” said Tom Thompson, professor and associate dean of CALS, director of CALS Global, and executive editor of the GAP Report. “Producers are absorbing more input cost and more risk for the same result. Reversing that requires knowing which practices and investments actually increase productivity, in which places, under which conditions.”
The report examines regenerative agriculture practices, including reduced and no-till, cover cropping, nutrient management, and adaptive grazing, as potential ways to improve productivity and profitability. It also identifies a key research gap: Current studies have not directly measured changes in productivity growth attributable to regenerative agriculture adoption.
Turning data into decisions
GAP IQ is free for users worldwide. Its productivity map explorer allows users to explore TFP and related data, compare countries and regions, create visualizations, and download data.
Future versions will add scenario-building capabilities to examine how investments in precision agriculture, soil health, farmer training, irrigation, and research and development could affect productivity, food security, and resilience.
Google Cloud technologies support the platform’s data and analytics infrastructure, while Appnovation designed the interface and user experience.
“Agricultural data has never suffered from scarcity. It has suffered from fragmentation,” said Angela Rosales, global vice president, product and strategy at Appnovation. “Our role is to make sure users can seamlessly engage with the underlying data, ask complex questions and uncover intelligence that inspires action.”
Organizations can also commission customized uses of GAP IQ based on their priorities. The Nature Conservancy is the first investor in that work, funding a pilot examining relationships among agricultural support payments, natural capital, and agricultural productivity.
“By combining decades of data, scientific evidence, and emerging AI capabilities, GAP IQ is designed to give decision-makers the information they need to explore how different policy and investment choices shape both agricultural productivity and environmental outcomes,” said Ginya Truitt Nakata, director of global agriculture and food systems policy at The Nature Conservancy. “It has the potential to become a powerful decision-support tool that helps identify pathways to more sustainable and productive agricultural growth.”
As GAP IQ advances, partners will also be able to sponsor regional projects that add subnational data and tailor its analytics to local agricultural priorities.
Sub-Saharan Africa illustrates the potential. Agricultural output there is growing 2.75 percent annually, but productivity growth contributes just 0.34 percent. Most growth instead comes from expanding land use and adding inputs. More localized data could help governments, development organizations, investors, and researchers identify what is driving those trends and where investments could have the greatest effect.
“If we get this right, it could change everything for agriculture,” said Martin Fregene, acting vice-president for Agriculture, Human and Social Development at the African Development Bank. “For Africa, but globally as well.”
Development and launch of GAP IQ were made possible by an investment from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“The most meaningful applications of AI and data science to global challenges must be grounded in trusted science,” said Mario Ferruzzi, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “We made an early investment in GAP IQ to position CALS to contribute substantively to both the evidence and the tools that inform agricultural decision-making. We look forward to expanding that work with partners who share that view.”
GAP IQ and the full 2026 GAP Report are available at gap.cals.vt.edu.
