Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Land resources are one of the four components of the natural environment: water, air, land and living resources. In this context land is both: a physical "milieu" necessary for the development of natural vegetation as well as cultivated vegetation;a resource for human activities.  The data presented here give information concerning land use state and changes (e.g. agricultural land, forest land).  Land area excludes area under inland water bodies (i.e. major rivers and lakes).   Arable refers to all land generally under rotation, whether for temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted only once) or meadows, or left fallow (less than five years). These data are not meant to indicate the amount of land that is potentially cultivable.  Permanent crops are those that occupy land for a long period and do not have to be planted for several years after each harvest (e.g. cocoa, coffee, rubber). Land under vines and trees and shrubs producing fruits, nuts and flowers, such as roses and jasmine, is so classified, as are nurseries (except those for forest trees, which should be classified under "forests and other wooded land").  Arable and permanent crop land is defined as the sum of arable area and land under permanent crops.  Permanent meadows and pastures refer to land used for five years or more to grow herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land).  Forest refers to land spanning more than 0.5 hectare (0.005 km2) and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. This includes land from which forests have been cleared but that will be reforested in the foreseeable future. This excludes woodland or forest predominantly under agricultural or urban land use and used only for recreation purposes.

Database published : June 2020 

The Agricultural Outlook has been prepared as a joint report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The report provides a ten year forward looking, assessment of trends and prospects in the major temperate-zone agricultural commodity markets of biofuels, cereals, oilseeds and oilseed products, sugar, meat, fish and sea food, dairy products, cotton, roots and tubers and pulses. It is published annually, in the middle of the second quarter, as part of a continuing effort to promote informed discussion of emerging market and policy issues. The data used to develop the projections underlying the assessment are those available as of January 2023. The projections and assessments provided in the report are the result of close co-operation between the OECD and FAO Secretariats and national experts with a jointly developed modelling system, based on the AGLINK-COSIMO model, used to facilitate consistency in the projections. The data series for the projections are drawn from OECD and FAO databases. For the most part information in these databases has been taken from national statistical sources. For further details on particular series, enquiries should be directed to the OECD and FAO Secretariats.