Arable land (% of land area) by country

What this measures

Arable land includes land defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted once), temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. Land abandoned as a result of shifting cultivation is excluded.

Limitations: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tries to impose standard definitions and reporting methods, but complete consistency across countries and over time is not possible. Thus, data on agricultural land in different climates may not be comparable. For example, permanent pastures are quite different in nature and intensity in African countries and dry Middle Eastern countries. The data collected by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations from official national sources through the questionnaire are supplemented with information from official secondary data sources.

Each country's latest available year is shown; countries report on different schedules, so compare years before comparing values.

Ranking

Regions and income groups

More environment indicators

• Fertilizer consumption (% of fertilizer production)
• Fertilizer consumption (kilograms per hectare of arable land)
• Agricultural land (sq. km)
• Agricultural land (% of land area)
• Arable land (hectares)
• Arable land (hectares per person)
• Land under cereal production (hectares)
• Permanent cropland (% of land area)
• Forest area (sq. km)
• Forest area (% of land area)
• Agricultural irrigated land (% of total agricultural land)
• Average precipitation in depth (mm per year)

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Source

World Bank, World Development Indicators, AG.LND.ARBL.ZS, CC BY 4.0. Original source: FAO electronic files and website, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), publisher: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) View on data.worldbank.org; the full definition is in the World Bank's metadata glossary.