World · 2023
Farmland, by country
Farmland — agricultural land, in the statistics — is everything used to grow food and raise animals: ploughed fields, orchards and vineyards, and the meadows and pastures that livestock graze. It covers more than a third of the world’s land, and most of it is grass, not crops.
Between 1961 and 2023 the world’s farmland per person fell by 58%, from 1.40 to 0.59 hectares. The farmed area itself changed little; the number of people it has to feed more than doubled.
The same series as a table
| Year | hectares per person |
|---|---|
| 1961 | 1.404 |
| 1971 | 1.171 |
| 1981 | 0.996 |
| 1991 | 0.859 |
| 2001 | 0.758 |
| 2011 | 0.659 |
| 2021 | 0.607 |
| 2023 | 0.594 |
Where it is
Largest areamillion hectares, 2023
- United States421.5
- China391.8
- Australia363.5
- Brazil237.1
- Russian Federation215.7
- Kazakhstan213.8
- India178.2
- Saudi Arabia175.6
- Sudan112.7
- Mongolia107.2
Largest share of the country% of land area, 2023
- Tuvalu100.0%
- Lesotho92.9%
- Uruguay87.4%
- Turkmenistan84.3%
- Cote d'Ivoire83.9%
- Saudi Arabia81.7%
- Uganda80.3%
- South Africa79.4%
- Kazakhstan79.2%
- Comoros78.9%
Most per personhectares per person, 2023
- Mongolia30.43
- Australia13.37
- Namibia12.81
- Kazakhstan10.38
- Botswana10.26
- Mauritania7.68
- Turkmenistan5.29
- Saudi Arabia4.97
- Uruguay4.51
- Greenland4.28
Large shares usually mean pasture. Steppe and savanna countries count as almost entirely “agricultural” because their grassland is grazed, even where little of it could be ploughed. See every economy →
What counts as farmland
The figures follow the Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition of agricultural land: arable land, land under permanent crops, and permanent meadows and pastures. Forest, built-up land and barren ground are left out, even where animals occasionally graze them. Definitions and neighbouring terms →
Latest observation 2023. World Bank dataset last updated 2026-10-08; retrieved 2026-11-02.