Definitions

Land statistics use a handful of terms that sound alike and mean different things. These are the ones the numbers on this site depend on.

Cropland

Arable land plus land under permanent crops. The word is also an official land-use category in the United States, where it is defined slightly differently and includes idle cropland.

Arable land

Land under temporary crops (counted once even if cropped twice a year), temporary meadows, market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow.

Permanent crops

Land planted with crops that occupy it for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest: fruit and nut trees, vines, coffee, cocoa, rubber, oil palm. Trees grown for wood are excluded.

Temporary crops

Crops sown and harvested within a year or so: cereals, pulses, roots, vegetables, cotton, most oilseeds.

Land area

Total area excluding inland water bodies and offshore claims.

Hectare

10,000 square metres; 2.471 acres.

What the figure does not tell you

The series measures area, not output. A hectare harvested three times a year and a hectare harvested once count the same, so cropland says little about how much food a country grows.

Because hectares are derived from rounded shares, very small economies can be off by a few hundred hectares.

Countries report the numbers themselves, to different standards and with different delays. Small year-to-year movements are often revisions rather than events.