Summary
The FAO provides data on 44 categories of land use, irrigation, and agricultural practices at national, regional, and global levels. The main data source comes from FAO questionnaires, supplemented with national statistical yearbooks and other official publications and information from governmental data portals.
With these data from the FAO, Our World in Data (OWD) presents the evolution of land use for agriculture per person between 1961 and 2022, which can be broken down by country. According to OWD, the land available for arable, permanent crops, pastures, and meadows has decreased worldwide per capita as the population grows, but at different rates: while regions such as North Africa, South Africa, and North America do so quickly, Southeast Europe and East Asia do so incredibly slowly. The subset of data used for this analysis is available by clicking the Downloaded tab on this graph.
Our World in Citation: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2013) – “Land Use”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use [Online Resource]
*Note: according to the FAO, geographical comparisons are limited due to different methods in each area. Additionally, the FAO states there is fairly good comparability for shorter time periods, but that full comparability cannot be expected for very long periods (i.e., from 1961) due to changes in product definition and classification.