Extended Data Fig. 7: Negative yield gap assessment.
Yield gaps (Yg) between water-limited yield potential and farmers’ actual yield for rainfed maize in the US Midwest at county level for two yield potential prediction approaches: a metamodel that integrates a bottom-up approach with machine learning (Metamodel) and a top-down approach (GAEZ, gaez.fao.org)5. Average county-level farmers’ yield for rainfed maize between 2005 and 2015 was retrieved from USDA-NASS Quick Stats (quickstats.nass.usda.gov/). Only counties with less than 5% of irrigated area or reporting non-irrigated yields in 3 or more years were considered. In the histograms, the dashed vertical line indicates Yg = 0, that is, no difference between yield potential and actual yield, and the percentage of counties presenting negative Yg for each method is shown.
