what percent of land is used for agriculture

What percentage of land is devoted to agriculture?

Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 2. This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.

What percent of Americans are involved in agriculture?

About 40 percent of the land in the United States is used for agriculture of some form, including livestock grazing. This includes 431.1 million acres of cropland, 396.9 million acres of pasture, and 71.5 million acres of forests.

What percentage of the US GDP is derived from agriculture?

4.3 Agricultural land At present some 11 percent (1.5 billion ha) of the globe’s land surface (13.4 billion ha) is used in crop production (arable land and land under permanent crops).

What percent of earth’s surface is used for agriculture?

 · Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 2 This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.

What percentage of land is used for agriculture?

Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 2. This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.

What are the two main uses of agricultural land?

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).

What is the agricultural area?

The agricultural area is the sum of arable land, permanent crops, permanent meadows and pastures.

How much land is there in the world?

The Land Area of the World is 13,003 million ha. 4,889 million ha are classified as ‘agricultural area’ by the FAO (this is 37.6% of the Land Area).

What is pastureland used for?

Pastureland (permanent meadows and pasture) 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.

What percentage of land is used for livestock grazing?

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 2015.

What is cropland measured in?

This visualisation shows total cropland (which does not include land for grazing) over the long-term, measured in hectares.

What percentage of land in the world is used for agriculture?

4.3 Agricultural land At present some 11 percent (1.5 billion ha) of the globe’s land surface (13.4 billion ha) is used in crop production (arable land and land under permanent crops).

What percent of US land is used for agriculture?

Agricultural land (% of land area) in United States was reported at 44.36 % in 2018, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources.

What is the current percentage of land used by humans for agriculture?

Today, the world population uses approximately 50 percent of total habitable land for agriculture.

What percentage of land is used for animal agriculture?

As the chart details, 71 percent of our land is considered habitable, and half of that land is used for agriculture. Of that 50 percent, 77 percent is used for livestock, either as land for grazing or land to grow animal feed.

Which country has no farming?

According to a recent World Bank report, the countries with the smallest percentages of land used for agriculture today include Suriname, Greenland, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Seychelles, and Norway.

How much of America is agriculture?

About 40 percent of the land in the United States is used for agriculture of some form, including livestock grazing. This includes 431.1 million acres of cropland, 396.9 million acres of pasture, and 71.5 million acres of forests.

Who owns most land in USA?

John Malone is the largest private landowner in the United States. Malone made his fortune as a media tycoon, building the company Tele-Communications, Inc, or TCI, and acting as its CEO before selling it to AT&T for $50 billion in 1999.

What percentage of land in the world is used for agriculture?

4.3 Agricultural land At present some 11 percent (1.5 billion ha) of the globe’s land surface (13.4 billion ha) is used in crop production (arable land and land under permanent crops).

How much land do we have for agriculture?

Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.

Which land is used for agriculture?

Land able to be used for farming is called “cultivable land “. Farmland, meanwhile, is used variously in reference to all agricultural land, to all cultivable land, or just to the newly restricted sense of “arable land “.

What can agricultural land be used for?

Agricultural land use Agricultural land denotes land sutiable for agricultural production, both crops and livestock. The Agricultural Land Classification grading system is also used by local planning authorities, developers and the public if development is poposed on agricultural land.

Which country has no farming?

According to a recent World Bank report, the countries with the smallest percentages of land used for agriculture today include Suriname, Greenland, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Seychelles, and Norway.

How much land is available on earth?

The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi 2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land.

Which crop has highest cultivated area in the world?

Rice was the most valuable agricultural crop in the world in 2016. It was third to sugarcane and maize (corn) in quantity produced.

What percentage of land is used for agriculture?

Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 2. This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.

How much of the world’s land is livestock?

If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% …

How much protein is in animal products?

The global average per capita protein availability from vegetal products was 49 grams per person per day, and 32g from animal products. Animal products therefore accounted for [32 / (32 + 49) * 100] = 39% of the world’s protein.

What is the FAO?

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provide global statistics on crop and food production, supply chains, and food available for human consumption.

What are the major uncertainties in the allocation of rangelands?

The major uncertainties – and explanation for discrepancies – in these assessments is the allocation of ‘rangelands’: in some regions it can be difficult to accurately quantify how much of rangelands are used for grazing, and how much is free from human pressure. Despite this uncertainty, most analyses tend to converge on an estimate of close to half of habitable land being used for agriculture.

How much of the world’s ice free land is used for farming?

If we rewind 1000 years, it is estimated that only 4 million square kilometers – less than 4% of the world’s ice-free and non-barren land area was used for farming. In the visualization we see the breakdown …

What is our world in data?

Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.

How has technology impacted land use?

The rapid adoption of new technology, improved crop varieties, improved insect and disease control, and other changes have boosted agricultural productivity to the extent that more production can be obtained from the same cropland base.

Why is cropland acreage declining?

For example, wheat acreage has declined 52 percent from its historic high in the early 1980s, a trend attributable to a variety of factors, including a reduction in the relative profitability of wheat due to increased foreign competition, CRP participation in wheat-producing areas, and genetic refinements to corn and soybean varieties that allowed these crops to be planted in areas previously used primarily for wheat. In contrast, soybean acreage has more than doubled since the 1960s, primarily as a result of strong international demand, while corn acreage has also risen in recent years in response to policy-induced biofuel demand.

What are some regional changes in cropland used for crops?

Some regional changes in cropland used for crops represent year-to-year fluctuations that tend to balance out over time, but other areas (e.g. , the Northeast, Southeast, and Mountain regions) have experienced clear long-term declines.

Why does land use change?

Land-use change occurs for a variety of reasons. Changing commodity and timber prices, agricultural and natural resource policies, urban pressure, and environmental factors ( e.g., droughts) prompt private landowners to shift land to uses that maximize economic returns.

What is land dedicated to special uses?

Land dedicated to special uses, which includes land in State/national parks and wilderness areas, has increased substantially since the MLU series began 1945. Urban land use has also increased, albeit more modestly, as population and economic growth spur demand for new housing and other forms of development.

What are the three land types?

Although the shares of land in different uses have fluctuated to some degree over time, land area in the top three categories (grassland pasture and range, forest, and cropland) has remained relatively stable. Land dedicated to special uses, which includes land in State/national parks and wilderness areas, has increased substantially since …

Is land use change bidirectional?

While land-use change can be bidirectional for some uses —such as forestry, grassland, and cropland—conversions to an urban use are typically irreversible. As part of the Major Land Uses program, ERS analyzes trends in all of these uses and examines factors driving broad land-use patterns and trends.

Where is land used in the United States?

Regional land-use patterns vary with differences in soil, climate, topography, and population. Cropland is roughly concentrated in the central regions of the contiguous United States; pasture and range in the more arid West; and forest land (both grazed and not grazed) in the East, where the topography and precipitation patterns are conducive to growing trees. The Northeast and Southeast have the highest shares of urban land, while 80 percent of the total acreage in parks, recreation, and wildlife uses are in the Mountain and Pacific regions and in Alaska.

What are the factors that affect land use?

A complex set of factors, including commodity prices; production technology; demand for land for residential, commercial, and industrial development; and agricultural and bioenergy policies, can induce land-use change as landowners respond to market conditions and try to maximize the returns to their land.

How many acres are in the MLU?

Land in rural transportation, defense, and industrial uses is estimated at nearly 50 million acres, which are included in the MLU ‘special uses’ category. Together, about 214 million acres, or 9 percent of the land base, are in urban areas or in developed uses outside urban areas. You may also be interested in…

Why are some acres converted to urban uses?

Some acres are converted to urban uses to serve the needs of a growing population. These factors have combined to cause a long-term net decline in grazing acreage, from over 1 billion acres in 1949 to 741 million acres in 2007. Every year, some rural land is converted to developed uses.

Is grazing land a crop?

Grazing lands generally are less suited for crop production than for other uses. Substantial acreage used for grazing has shifted to recreational, wildlife, and environmental uses. Under favorable growing conditions, particularly in the South, pasture land may revert to forest. Some acres are converted to urban uses to serve the needs of a growing population. These factors have combined to cause a long-term net decline in grazing acreage, from over 1 billion acres in 1949 to 741 million acres in 2007.

Which region has the most urban land?

The Northeast and Southeast have the highest shares of urban land, while 80 percent of the total acreage in parks, recreation, and wildlife uses are in the Mountain and Pacific regions and in Alaska. Grazing lands generally are less suited for crop production than for other uses.

Is cropland stable?

Since 1980, cropland used for crops has been relatively stable, despite significant variation in commodity prices (see ‘ Commodity Prices Vary More Than U.S. Cropland Acreage ‘). Relatively stable patterns of changes in land use at the national level obscure larger shifts in land use at regional and State levels.

What percent of US land is used for agriculture?

Agricultural land (% of land area) in United States was reported at 44.36 % in 2018, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources.

What is the current percentage of land used by humans for agriculture?

Today, the world population uses approximately 50 percent of total habitable land for agriculture.

How much of the US is used for farming?

About 40 percent of the land in the United States is used for agriculture of some form, including livestock grazing. This includes 431.1 million acres of cropland, 396.9 million acres of pasture, and 71.5 million acres of forests.

What percentage of land is used for livestock?

A 212-page online report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says 26 percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface is used for livestock grazing. One-third of the planet’s arable land is occupied by livestock feed crop cultivation.

Who owns most land in USA?

1. John Malone: 2,200,000 acres. The largest private landowner in the US, Liberty Media’s John Malone owns a staggering 2.2 million acres of land in America.

Which country has no agriculture land?

According to a recent World Bank report, the countries with the smallest percentages of land used for agriculture today include Suriname, Greenland, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Seychelles, and Norway.

Which land can be used for farming?

Land able to be used for farming is called “cultivable land “. Farmland, meanwhile, is used variously in reference to all agricultural land, to all cultivable land, or just to the newly restricted sense of “arable land “.

How much land is in forests?

On the flipside, forests account for over a quarter of land in the U.S., divided almost evenly between deciduous and evergreen trees. Many protected national and state parks can also be found in and around forests.

How much land does an urban area take up?

It’s clear that even a little space goes a long way. Although urban areas take up only 2% of land, an overwhelming majority of Americans call cities their home. As of 2018, urbanites made up over 82% of the U.S. population.

Where are soybeans exported?

Much of these crops feed not only Americans, but other parts of the world too. Soybeans, corn, and wheat are exported across the Pacific mainly to China and Japan. Corn, in particular, is a unique crop with a myriad of uses, from food to fuels.

What percentage of corn is used in ethanol?

In the United States, federal mandates require vehicles to use a blend of gasoline and biofuels like ethanol— 94% of which is produced from the starch in corn grain. Therefore, a large portion of U.S. corn goes into ethanol production.

How much corn is used in animal feed?

100%. Corn accounts for more than 96% of U.S. feed grain use and production. As a result, animal feed makes up nearly 40% of the country’s corn usage. This is because corn is a rich source of carbohydrates, and in combination with protein from soybeans, it can make for an effective diet for livestock.

How much corn is used for livestock?

Up to 40% of U.S. corn is turned into livestock feed, with cows consuming over half ( 56%) of this amount. At present, the U.S. is the world’s largest beef producer, followed by Brazil. In fact, beef production takes up 40% of total livestock-related land use domestically.

Which state has the most forests?

Many protected national and state parks can also be found in and around forests. On the mainland, California and Oregon are the states with the most forested land—unfortunately, they have also been plagued by wildfires in recent, dry summer months.