Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

by Vaclav Smil

The inputs’ improvements show growth rates an order of magnitude lower than those due to Moore’s law, ranging mostly between 1.5 and 3% a year (as do, with the opposite sign, annual energy, material savings, and cost reductions). Here are some important examples of these steady (and in the long term undoubtedly impressive) but modest improvement rates. During more than half a century since the introduction of short-stalked wheat and rice cultivars, average global yields of wheat and rice have grown, respectively, by about 3.2% and 2.6% a year, while the yields of American hybrid corn have been rising by 2%/year since 1950 (FAO 2019). During the 20th century the average efficiency of steam turbogenerators (producing most of the world’s electricity) was improving by about 1.5% a year.