Sovereign rows of the World Bank “Agricultural land (% of land area)” series via Our World in Data. Includes arable land, permanent crops, and permanent pasture. Top 30 by most recent year. Aggregates excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Agricultural Land Share by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by Our World in Data (mostly re-published World Bank / UN public statistics) (OWID Grapher slug “share-of-land-area-used-for-agriculture”). Values are expressed in % of land area.
What to watch. Watch how two very different kinds of countries share the top: ranchland-heavy Uruguay and Saudi Arabia beside densely cultivated Burundi and Côte d’Ivoire. “Agricultural land” includes pasture, so a high share does not mean high production.
Caveats. “Agricultural land” bundles cropland and permanent pasture together, so arid rangeland counts the same as intensively farmed fields. Land-use reclassification can move a country’s share without any change on the ground, and a high share says nothing about output — the Netherlands sits mid-table yet is a top agricultural exporter.
Trends in the data
What changed most in this table is the cast at the top. Uruguay, first in 1961 at 93.44%, is 4th in 2023 at 81.35%; Mongolia, second at 90.91%, has fallen to 68.96% and 26th; Eswatini, third at 85.35%, is 24th; and Denmark, eighth at 79.00%, is 29th at 65.53%. In their place Côte d’Ivoire has climbed from 49.48% to 86.48%, a gain of 37 points that took it from 24th to 1st. Saudi Arabia also rose 2.02×, from 40.08% to 80.77%, moving from 26th to 5th.
What is worth noticing is that the top of this indicator has been completely swapped between countries that rose and countries that fell. Those that rose — Côte d’Ivoire, Saudi Arabia, Uganda (45.13% → 71.89%) and Rwanda (53.30% → 76.33%) — are countries that have been clearing new farmland. Those that fell — Mongolia, Eswatini, Denmark, Uruguay — were already using most of their territory for agriculture. A country near the ceiling can only come down, and only a country with room can go up; that structure produces the wholesale reshuffle.
The spread between top and bottom narrowed from 53.36 points in 1961 to 21.35 points in 2023, less than half. Reading that as global convergence in land use would be premature. The table selects the top 30 by the latest year’s value, so the countries gathered here are at similar levels in that year by construction; going back in time, those same 30 started from scattered positions. The top-30 design itself works to compress the differences at the right-hand end.
Coverage runs 26 countries through 1991 and 30 from 1993. The 30-country average bottoms at 65.62% in 1966 and peaks at 73.76% in 2022, with 73.66% in 2023 — about 8 points higher across half a century, again subject to the same selection effect. Following the direction of each country’s line is more rewarding than comparing absolute levels. Remember, finally, that “agricultural land” here includes permanent pasture, so extensive rangeland in arid regions counts as farmland even where output is thin; a high share is not a high yield.
Trivia quiz
Besides pasture and cropland, what category of farmland covers orchards, vineyards and tea?
Permanent crops — plants grown for many years without replanting, such as fruit trees, grapes and tea. (Source)
What is the clearing of forest for farmland and other uses, a major environmental concern, called?
Deforestation. Agricultural expansion is one of the main drivers of tropical forest loss. (Source)
Which institution publishes open development data such as agricultural-land share by country?
The World Bank, through World Bank Open Data. (Source)
Source
World Bank via Our World in Data — Agricultural land (% of land area)