Most Produced Crops in the World

Data

Source: FAO — FAOSTAT Crop Production. 2022 data in million metric tonnes.

Note: What You Should Know About the World's Most Produced Crops

What "Most Produced" Actually Means

This chart ranks crops by sheer tonnage — the total weight harvested in a year — not by calories, not by money and not by how many bowls of porridge they end up in. That single choice explains a lot of what looks surprising. Sugarcane tops the list at roughly 1,894 million tonnes, but almost none of that goes straight to your dinner plate. It's a field crop grown to be crushed for sugar and fermented for ethanol. Big harvests of "watery" crops like bananas, tomatoes, watermelons and potatoes also get a heavyweight bump from all the water they naturally carry. So the ranking is really "heaviest production," and it's a great lens on global agriculture — just not the same thing as "what feeds most people."

The Heavyweights: Sugarcane, Maize, Wheat and Rice

• Sugarcane (1,894 Mt) is the undisputed champion and has been for a long time. It grows best in warm, tropical climates — Brazil and India together produce around half the world's crop. Virtually all of it becomes sugar or ethanol, and Brazil alone turns a huge share into biofuel for cars.
• Maize (1,162 Mt), the world's #2 corn harvest, is the most versatile crop on the planet. It feeds livestock, gets milled for food and corn syrup, and is the leading grain for ethanol fuel. The United States alone grows far more than any other country.
• Wheat (808 Mt) is the quintessential staple grain — the backbone of breads, pasta and noodles — and it's grown across nearly every temperate region on Earth, led by China, India and Russia.
• Rice (787 Mt) feeds more people directly than any other crop. It thrives in flooded paddy fields across Asia, with China and India accounting for over half of global output.

The Quiet Giants Behind the Top Ten

• Potatoes (374 Mt) are the world's #1 non-grain food crop and a calorie powerhouse — you can live a long time on potatoes alone. China and India grow the most.
• Palm oil fruit (433 Mt) sneaks into the top ranks even though it mostly doesn't show up on produce shelves — its oil ends up in cooking, snacks, cosmetics and margarine. Indonesia and Malaysia dominate production.
• Soybeans (369 Mt) are the closest thing to a "protein crop," value because they're crushed for oil and, more importantly, for protein-rich animal feed. Most of the world's soybeans come from Brazil and the US.
• Cassava (330 Mt) is the quiet staple of tropical Africa and South America — a starchy root that feeds hundreds of millions and is also used for tapioca and even biofuel starch.
• Sugar beet (272 Mt) is sugarcane's temperate-weather twin. Because it grows in cooler climates, beet sugar is a huge part of European production — France and Germany lead.
• Tomatoes (189 Mt), bananas (122 Mt) and watermelons (103 Mt) round out the list and prove how big the fresh-and-juicy side of agriculture really is — China is the top grower of all three.
• Barley (155 Mt), sweet potatoes (93 Mt) and sorghum (63 Mt) close out the table: barley is famous for beer and animal feed, sweet potatoes are a nutritious tropical staple, and drought-resistant sorghum keeps millions fed in harsher regions of Africa and Asia.

Why Staple Crops Feed the World

Only a handful of plant species actually carry most of humanity's calories — a few grains and root crops do the heavy lifting. That concentration is both a strength and a risk. It means a relatively small set of crops can be farmed at massive scale, shipped worldwide and processed cheaply, keeping billions fed. But it also leaves global food supply vulnerable: a bad wheat season, a corn blight or a disease hitting sugarcane can ripple across the whole food system. Diversity in what we grow — and in the diets we eat — is quietly one of the most important tools for food security.

• Grain crops (wheat, rice, maize) plus potatoes provide the majority of calories consumed worldwide.
• Most "oil and biofuel" crops — sugarcane, maize, soybeans, palm fruit — hold top spots here even though they're more about fuel, feed and processed ingredients than direct food.
• China and India are the farmers of the world: they grow the most rice, wheat and potatoes, and China leads in tomatoes, bananas and watermelons.

Fun Facts

• Sugarcane isn't just the #1 crop — a single hectare of tropical cane can yield more sugar than any beet field, which is why Brazil grows food-to-fuel on such a scale.
• Corn (maize) has been bred for thousands of years from teosinte, a wild grass with thumb-sized cobs — one of agriculture's greatest "superhuman" makeovers.
• Potatoes were unknown outside South America until a few centuries ago; today they grow on every continent except Antarctica.
• Rice paddies are flooded on purpose — the standing water blocks weeds that would otherwise choke out the crop.
• A single sugarcane stalk can tower over 4 meters tall and keep regrowing from the same roots for years, harvest after harvest.
• Watermelons are 90%+ water, which helps explain how they rank alongside true powerhouse staples by tonnage.

In short: weigh the world's fields and you get this very chart — but read the numbers with fresh eyes. Heaviest isn't always the most essential, and the crops that quietly keep humanity fed (rice, wheat, potatoes) are often not the ones at the very top of the scale.