Our World
in Data
It’s Giving Season. Help us do more with a donation.
Data

Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures

FAO
See all data and research on:
Agricultural Production

What you should know about this indicator

Item: Permanent meadows and pastures Description: Land used permanently (five years or more) to grow herbaceous forage crops through cultivation or naturally (wild prairie or grazing land). Permanent meadows and pastures on which trees and shrubs are grown should be recorded under this heading only if the growing of forage crops is the most important use of the area. Measures may be taken to keep or increase productivity of the land (i.e., use of fertilizers, mowing or systematic grazing by domestic animals.) This class includes: • Grazing in wooded areas (agroforestry areas, for example); • Grazing in shrubby zones (heath, maquis, garigue); • Grassland in the plain or low mountain areas used for grazing: land crossed during transhumance where the animals spend a part of the year (approximately 100 days) without returning to the holding in the evening: mountain and subalpine meadows and similar; and steppes and dry meadows used for pasture.

Metric: Share in Land area

Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures
FAO
Permanent meadows and pastures are areas used permanently (five years or more) for herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land).
Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 14, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1961–2021
Unit
percent

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Land Use by Our World in Data

Land Use

Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The FAOSTAT Land Use domain contains data on forty-four categories of land use, irrigation and agricultural practices and five indicators relevant to monitor agriculture, forestry and fisheries activities at national, regional and global level.

Data are available by country and year, with global coverage and annual updates.

Retrieved on
March 14, 2024
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use (2024).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Agricultural Production”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-meadows-and-pastures [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures – FAO” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use” [original data]. Retrieved December 12, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-meadows-and-pastures