Chapter 02 · Nature, land & waterCoffee, Cocoa & Agricultural Commodities
Arable land
Definition
Per FAO land-use definitions, the total area under temporary crops (less than one-year growing cycles), temporary meadows and pastures (under five years), and land with temporary fallow. Arable land explicitly excludes land that is potentially cultivable but not normally cultivated; together with permanent crops it forms cropland.
References
Definition (temporary crops, rotation with fallow); 2023 figures (1,381 Mha arable; 4.8bn ha agricultural land); cropland trends 2001–2023.
Formal category definitions; exclusion of "potentially cultivable" land; cropland/arable/permanent-crops hierarchy.
Overview
What it means
Arable land is a statistical category, not a soil-quality judgement. In 2023, world arable land was about 1,381 million hectares (with a further 191 Mha of permanent crops), within roughly 4. 8 billion hectares of agricultural land overall. Cropland expanded by about 78 Mha (5%) between 2001 and 2023 while permanent pasture shrank.
How it is used
FAOSTAT and national statistics use the category to track agricultural expansion, land-use change and pressure on natural ecosystems. It feeds indicators on land degradation, food production capacity and deforestation-linked conversion. Definitional differences between FAO ("under temporary crops") and some national statistics ("potentially cultivable") are a known comparability pitfall.
Why it matters
How much of the planet is cropped — and how fast that area is expanding into forests and grasslands — is a core sustainability variable, linking food security, biodiversity loss and land-sector emissions. Precise definitions keep that measurement honest.