Has the world passed peak agricultural land?
Agricultural land is the sum of cropland and pasture used for grazing livestock.This is shown for three sources, which use different methods of estimation. While they disagree on how much land is used for agriculture, and the exact date thatit peaked, they do all agree that we have passed the peak.
Interactive visualization requires JavaScript
Related research and data
- After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’
- Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world’s wildlife?
Charts
- Agricultural area over the long-term
- Agricultural land per capita
- Agricultural land use
- Agricultural land use per person
- Arable land needed to produce a fixed quantity of crops
- Arable land use per person
- Area of land needed to meet global vegetable oil demand
- Breakdown of habitable land area
- Change in cereal production, yield, land use and population
- Commodity-driven deforestation
- Contribution to global mean surface temperature rise from agriculture and land use
- Coverage of wetlands
- Cropland and pasture per person
- Cropland area
- Cropland extent over the long-term
- Cropland per person over the long-term
- Dietary land use vs. GDP per capita
- Extent of extensive agriculture
- Extent of foraging, hunting and gathering
- Extent of intensive agriculture
- Extent of pastoralism
- FAO projections of arable land
- Global agricultural land use by major crop type
- Global cropland is still increasing
- Global land use since 10,000 BCE
- Grazing land use over the long-term
- How much cropland has the world spared due to increases in crop yields?
- How much global land is used as pasture for livestock?
- Is agricultural land expanding? Change over the prior decade
- Land area in hectares
- Land area in square kilometres
- Land area per crop type
- Land use
- Land use for palm oil production
- Land use for vegetable oil crops
- Land use of foods per 1000 kilocalories
- Land use over the long-term
- Land use per 100 grams of protein
- Land use per kilogram of food product
- Land use vs. yield change in cereal production
- Land used for agriculture
- Organic agricultural area
- Pig production: Land use vs. cost to animal welfare
- Projections for global peak agricultural land
- Share of adults who perceive their rights to land as secure
- Share of adults with legal documentation of their rights to land
- Share of arable land which is organic
- Share of deforestation that is driven by domestic consumption
- Share of global habitable land needed for agriculture if everyone had the diet of...
- Share of land area used for agriculture
- Share of land area used for arable agriculture
- Share of land covered by lakes and rivers
- Share of land defined as natural habitat
- Share of land that is degraded
- Share of land used for permanent meadows and pastures
- Share of mountain land that is degraded
- Share of rural land area where the elevation is 5 meters or less
- Share of world regions with land use present
- Terrain Ruggedness Index
- Tree cover loss by dominant driver
- Woodland area by type