Global spatial data on yields of wheat, sugarcane and maize at 0.25 and 0.5 degrees resolution for 2000-2014. Annual data on wheat, sugarcane and maize yield have been extracted from agricultural statistics, which are recorded annually at regional and national scale depending on the country. The yield data were spatially disaggregated to produce gridded maps (0.25 and 0.5 degrees spatial resolution) of yields per crop type. The earthstat dataset, which provides gridded data on crop distribution (i.e. a crop mask for 2000q), was used to obtain information on the spatial distribution of wheat, sugarcane and maize across the world. The spatial disaggregation process was repeated for every year between 2000 and 2014. The data were produced to constrain agro-ecosystem carbon cycling estimates used in large-scale atmospheric CO2 inversion studies and to be used as inputs in agro-ecosystem biogeochemistry models. The data are provided in netcdf4 (.nc) format.