Definitions
Land statistics use a handful of terms that sound alike and mean different things. These are the ones the numbers on this site depend on.
- Arable land
- Land under temporary crops (a field cropped twice in a year is counted once), temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. Land abandoned as a result of shifting cultivation is excluded. This is the FAO definition, and the one the World Bank series uses.
- Permanent crops
- Land planted with crops that occupy it for years and need not be replanted after each harvest: orchards, vineyards, coffee, cocoa, rubber, nut and olive trees. Not part of arable land.
- Cropland
- Arable land plus land under permanent crops. In the United States the word is also an official land-use category in its own right.
- Permanent meadows and pastures
- Land used for five years or more to grow herbaceous forage, whether cultivated or wild. Not arable.
- Agricultural land
- The sum of all three: arable land, permanent crops, and permanent meadows and pastures. Worldwide it is about three and a half times the arable area.
- Land area
- A country’s total area without inland water bodies — major rivers and lakes — and without its claims to the continental shelf or exclusive economic zone. “% of land area” divides by this figure, not by total territory.
- Temporary fallow
- Cultivated land rested for one growing season or more, but for less than five years. It still counts as arable.
- Hectare
- 10,000 square metres; 2.471 acres. One square kilometre is 100 hectares.
What the figure does not tell you
“Arable” describes how land is used, not how good it is. The series says nothing about soil quality, rainfall, irrigation or yield: a hectare of irrigated delta and a hectare of dry steppe count the same. It also measures land in use, not land that could be ploughed. A country can gain arable land by clearing forest and lose it to cities, erosion or a change in what farmers choose to grow.
Countries report the numbers themselves, to different standards and with different delays. Small year-to-year movements are often revisions rather than events.