{"id":1205675,"name":"Land area used for agriculture","unit":"hectares","createdAt":"2026-03-03T18:42:33.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-04-17T11:27:09.000Z","coverage":"","timespan":"1961-2023","datasetId":7400,"shortUnit":"ha","columnOrder":0,"shortName":"agricultural_land","catalogPath":"grapher/agriculture/2026-03-02/long_term_food_and_agriculture_trends/long_term_food_and_agriculture_trends#agricultural_land","descriptionShort":"Land used for growing crops and grazing livestock. It includes both cropland and permanent meadows and pastures. Data for world regions has been adjusted for changes in historical boundaries and limited coverage, so that long-term trends can be visualized.","descriptionFromProducer":"Item: Agricultural land\n\nDescription: Land used for cultivation of crops and animal husbandry. The total of areas under ''Cropland'' and ''Permanent meadows and pastures.''\n\nMetric: Area\n\nDescription: Extent of surface of land or water.","descriptionProcessing":"To be able to visualize long-term trends, we have adjusted world regions as follows (see [this technical publication](https://docs.owid.io/projects/etl/analyses/food_supply_of_world_regions/food_supply_of_world_regions.html) for more details):\n- We keep only country-years for which data on food supply and agricultural land area is available. This removes 37 countries, namely American Samoa, Andorra, Aruba, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Cook Islands, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, French Guiana, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Guam, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Macao, Martinique, Mayotte, Montserrat, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Palestine, Puerto Rico, Reunion, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, San Marino, Singapore, Tokelau, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States Virgin Islands, Wallis and Futuna, and Western Sahara.\n- We exclude the 8 USSR Asian successors from Asia, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.\n- We include 7 (of the 8) USSR Asian successors as part of Europe. Turkmenistan is not included, due to limited data coverage.\n- We exclude 23 other countries that have limited data coverage for either food supply or agricultural land area. These countries are Bahrain, Bermuda, Bhutan, Brunei, Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Marshall Islands, Melanesia, Micronesia (country), Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, North Korea, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Polynesia, Qatar, Seychelles, Somalia, Syria, Tonga, and Tuvalu.\n- We retain Sudan (former), Sudan, and South Sudan, despite South Sudan's missing data between 2012-2018 (causing a visible dip in Africa's agricultural land use), because removing these regions would significantly reduce valuable data.","type":"float","dataChecksum":"8130157694319336677","metadataChecksum":"7882480032218877998","datasetName":"Long-term food and agriculture trends","updatePeriodDays":365,"datasetVersion":"2026-03-02","nonRedistributable":false,"display":{"name":"Agricultural land","unit":"hectares","shortUnit":"ha"},"schemaVersion":2,"processingLevel":"major","presentation":{"titlePublic":"Land area used for agriculture","attributionShort":"UN FAO","topicTagsLinks":["Food Supply"]},"descriptionKey":["The data for world regions — especially Europe and Asia — has been adjusted to allow consistent long-term trends despite changes in historical boundaries and limited coverage. To this end, we reassign USSR successor states from Asia to Europe and exclude countries with limited data coverage. For more details, see [this technical publication](https://docs.owid.io/projects/etl/analyses/food_supply_of_world_regions/food_supply_of_world_regions.html)."],"dimensions":{"years":{"values":[{"id":1961},{"id":1962},{"id":1963},{"id":1964},{"id":1965},{"id":1966},{"id":1967},{"id":1968},{"id":1969},{"id":1970},{"id":1971},{"id":1972},{"id":1973},{"id":1974},{"id":1975},{"id":1976},{"id":1977},{"id":1978},{"id":1979},{"id":1980},{"id":1981},{"id":1982},{"id":1983},{"id":1984},{"id":1985},{"id":1986},{"id":1987},{"id":1988},{"id":1989},{"id":1990},{"id":1991},{"id":1992},{"id":1993},{"id":1994},{"id":1995},{"id":1996},{"id":1997},{"id":1998},{"id":1999},{"id":2000},{"id":2001},{"id":2002},{"id":2003},{"id":2004},{"id":2005},{"id":2006},{"id":2007},{"id":2008},{"id":2009},{"id":2010},{"id":2011},{"id":2012},{"id":2013},{"id":2014},{"id":2015},{"id":2016},{"id":2017},{"id":2018},{"id":2019},{"id":2020},{"id":2021},{"id":2022},{"id":2023}]},"entities":{"values":[{"id":15,"name":"Afghanistan","code":"AFG"},{"id":273,"name":"Africa","code":"OWID_AFR"},{"id":330401,"name":"Africa 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Data are available yearly and by country, regional and global levels. The domain includes Land Use Indicators providing information on the percentage share of agricultural and forest land, and their sub-components, including irrigated areas and areas under organic agriculture, within a country land use matrix. Data are available at country, regional and global level, for the following elements: (in percentage) i) Share in Land area; ii) Share in Agricultural land, iii) Share in Cropland; and iv) Share in Forest land; (in ha/pc) v) Area per capita.","producer":"Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations","citationFull":"Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use (2025).","attribution":"Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025)","attributionShort":"FAOSTAT","urlMain":"http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL","urlDownload":"https://bulks-faostat.fao.org/production/Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).zip","dateAccessed":"2026-02-25","datePublished":"2025-11-14","license":{"url":"http://www.fao.org/contact-us/terms/db-terms-of-use/en","name":"CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO"}}]}