We use roughly half of global habitable land for agriculture. But how much of total land area is utilised for agriculture across the world?
In the map here we see the share of total both habitable and non-habitable land area used for agriculture. There is large variability in the share of land a given country uses for agriculture. Allocation ranges from less than ten percent, particularly across countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Scandinavian region to close to 80 percent across most regions including the UK, Uruguay, South Africa, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. We will explore this difference in cropland and pastureland in the following section.
There are two main uses of agricultural land: arable farming which is land dedicated to growing crops , and pastureland which includes meadows and pastures used for livestock rearing. In the chart here we see a global map of land used for arable agriculture as a share of total land area. For most countries, as we will show in the section below, land use for livestock grazing is dominant relative to arable farming.
For most countries, land dedicated to cropland is typically below 20 percent, with many countries dedicating less than 10 percent. There are some notable exceptions, however; countries in South Asia and Europe allocate a large share of land area to arable farming. India, Bangladesh, Ukraine and Denmark all dedicated more than half of total land area to cropland in For most countries, the majority of agricultural land is used for livestock rearing in the form of pastureland.
In the map here we see the share of permanent meadows and pasture as a percentage of total land area. As a contrast to arable farming, land use for livestock in Europe and South Asia, in particular, is typically less than 20 percent. However, most continental regions have countries where pastureland reaches close to half of total land area.
In some countries particularly in Central Asia, including Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan this can reach up to 70 percent. Livestock farming can take place across a range of diverse climatic and environmental regions for example, ranging from cattle rearing in temperate regions to sheep farming in hilly and semi-arid terrain ; meaning that this type of agriculture is potentially less geographically-constrained than arable farming.
The visualisation here shows the change in the average cropland use per person over the long-term since 10, BC , measured in hectares per person. Global population has more than doubled over the last 50 years.
To meet the demands of a rapidly growing population on a planet with finite land resources, reducing our per capita land footprint is essential. Overall we see that the arable land use per capita has declined across all regions since Per capita land use is highest in North America— more than double the land use of any other region.
Rates of reduction in South Asia have been the most dramatic; per capita land use in was roughly one-third of its value in The visualisation shows the change in the average agricultural land use which is the sum of cropland and grazing area per person over the long-term since 10, BC , measured in hectares per person. If we extend our land coverage above from arable land use to total agricultural land which is the sum of arable, permanent crops and pastures and meadows , we still see overall declines in land per person but with different rates and patterns of reduction.
Increasing prosperity in many parts of the developing world, along with countries like China and India, is leading to a burgeoning global middle class. With each of these people buying refrigerators, mobile phones, televisions, computers and cars, the demand for energy is expected to double over the next two decades. Exactly how the world will meet this demand in the face of efforts to reduce climate change could greatly affect how much land we have at our disposal.
Rising seas claim coastal land Historically, trade has fuelled the rise of middle classes and wealth in coastal areas. A study by researchers at Kiel University in Germany and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK estimated that there were million people living in low lying coastal areas in By they predict this will have soared to more than a billion.
If we take them away we remove a lot of the protection against coastal storms and rising sea levels. Rising sea levels due to climate change are likely to put further pressure on these packed coastal regions, she warns.
Island nations like the Maldives are particularly vulnerable to loss of land in this way. Miami in Florida is another famous example. Further away from the coast, growing populations are spilling onto land that will leave them more vulnerable in the future. Suddenly, land is at a premium. Even in developed countries like the UK, pressure on housing has resulted in large scale developments on land known to be prone to flooding. In the past decade, flooding in these areas has caused damage that has stretched into billions of pounds.
The low-lying Netherlands, for example, has tackled its problems with flooding by giving the water back some space to spill into. It is an approach that other countries, including the UK, have said they hope to follow. Rising sea levels due to climate change are causing more floods in populous, coastal cities like Miami, Florida, and gradually stealing coastlines Credit: Getty Images.
Around With climate change also expected to exacerbate droughts, floods and storms, Axworthy warns the problem is likely to worsen. Many governments are so bad that they do nothing about this. Various data sets show that different continents and countries use their land for the different land uses in different proportions. Just one example of this is the difference between how much land the United States and Australia use for forests Australia much less, and the US much more.
Read more about a more detailed description of agricultural land, how much is pasture land vs cropland, how much we have left on Earth, and a breakdown of other relevant agricultural land information in this guide.
Trees can be native, or they can be plantation forests grown for the purpose of producing wood and other materials. Deforestation, as well as reafforestation and the mass planting of trees , and land re-greening projects can impact the amount of forest land on Earth.
Can include land used for airports, parks, wildlife conservation, infrastructure like highways and railroads, marshes and deserts, and so on. Different countries and regions might have slightly different classifications and definitions for different land uses. You can read more about the how much water there is on earth in this guide. Agriculture is the predominant land use for habitable land by far, followed by forests, and then shrubland.
Acreage statistics for each type of land use in the contiguous 48 states in were as follows:. Something worth noting is that each country and continent uses their land in different proportions for the different land uses. On the country, the wikipedia. Australia uses far less. Of the land used for crops, some types of crops such as wheat, maize, rice and barley take up much more total and proportional cropland than others.
Over the last few centuries, this has changed dramatically: wild habitats have been squeezed out by turning it into agricultural land. In the visualization we see the breakdown of global land area today. Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. It has transformed habitats and is one of the greatest pressures for biodiversity: of the 28, species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List , agriculture is listed as a threat for 24, of them.
But we also know that we can reduce these impacts — both through dietary changes, by substituting some meat with plant-based alternatives and through technology advances. With solutions from both consumers and producers, we have an important opportunity to restore some of this farmland back to forests and natural habitats. Other studies confirm this distribution of global land: in an analysis of how humans have transformed global land use in recent centuries, Ellis et al.
Ellis, E. Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, to Global Ecology and Biogeography , 19 5 , Despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.
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