Food and Agriculture Organization

The Agri-environmental Indicators—Land domain provides information on the annual evolution of the distribution of agricultural and forest areas, and their sub-components, including irrigated areas, at national, regional and global levels.

AQUASTAT is FAO's global information system on water and agriculture, developed by the Land and Water Division. The main mandate of the program is to collect, analyze and disseminate information on water resources, water uses, and agricultural water management with an emphasis on countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. This allows interested users to find comprehensive and regularly updated information at global, regional, and national levels.

Data on agricultural land-use are valuable for conducting studies on a various perspectives concerning agricultural production, food security and for deriving cropping intensity among others uses. Indicators derived from the land-use categories can also elucidate the environmental sustainability of countries’ agricultural practices. FAOSTAT Land-use statistics contain a wide range of information on variables that are significant for: understanding the structure of a country’s agricultural sector; making economic plans and policies for food security; deriving environmental indicators, including those related to investment in agriculture and data on gross crop area and net crop area which are useful for policy formulation and monitoring. Land-use resources sub-domain covers: Country area (including area under inland water bodies), Land area (excluding area under inland water bodies), Agricultural area, Arable land and Permanent crops, Arable land, Permanent crops, Permanent meadows and pastures, Forest area, Other land and Area equipped for irrigation. Detailed information on sub-categories: Temporary crops, Temporary meadows and pastures, Fallow land (temporary: less than 5 years), Permanent meadows and pastures cultivated and naturally grown and Organic land. Data are available from 1961 to 2009 for more than 200 countries and areas. Forest area: Global Forest Resource Assessment 2010 (FRA 2010) is the main source of forest area data in FAOSTAT. Data were provided by countries for years 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010. Data for intermediate years were estimated for FAO using linear interpolation and tabulation. Some of the most interesting data for economists is found in this domain. The national distribution of land, among arable land, pastures and other lands, as well as the importance of irrigation are just some of the interesting data sets.