FAO agricultural land-use area panel (1961-2024)

No commercial useFreshLicense: CC-BY-4.0

Downloads are disabled for this dataset: its license prohibits commercial use. The documentation, schema and sample rows stay available here.

Agricultural land-use area from FAO's FAOSTAT Land Use domain (RL): one row per (country, land-use category, year), 1961-2024, ~240 countries and territories x 13 headline categories (country/land area, agricultural land, cropland, arable land, permanent crops, permanent meadows and pastures, temporary crops/fallow/meadows, irrigable land, inland waters, other land), with area in 1000 ha, each category's share of the country's land area, the agricultural components' share of agricultural land, the trailing 10-year change, the FAO observation flag and a deterministic row hash. Who joins this: land-system models join land accounts on (area, year) to production and yield panels to split area effects from yield effects; climate analysts read the agricultural-land and cropland shares to size land-conversion pressure; irrigation planners use the equipped-for-irrigation share of agricultural land as the water-infrastructure headroom.

Source: FAOSTAT Land Use Intelligence
Rows: 139,165
Columns: 12
Source cadence: Yearly
Last refreshed: Oct 10, 2026
Theme: agriculture

Column	Type	Description
area_code	string	FAOSTAT numeric area code (countries and territories; regional aggregates such as World are excluded from this panel). (unit: string)
area_code_m49	string	UN M49 code for the area, as published by FAOSTAT. (unit: string)
area	string	FAOSTAT area name. (unit: string)
item_code	string	FAOSTAT land-use item code (13 curated categories: 6600 country area, 6601 land area, 6610 agricultural land, 6620 cropland, 6621 arable land, 6650 permanent crops, 6655 permanent meadows and pastures, 6630 temporary crops, 6640 temporary fallow, 6633 temporary meadows and pastures, 6690 land area equipped for irrigation, 6680 inland waters, 6670 other land). (unit: string)
item	string	FAOSTAT land-use category name. (unit: string)
year	integer	Reference year (1961-2024; 'Other land' starts 1990 and the temporary land-use categories start 2001 upstream). (unit: year)
area_1000ha	float	Area in thousands of hectares (FAO element 5110). Null only where FAO publishes no area cell for the (area, item, year). (unit: 1000 ha)
share_of_land_area_pct	float	The category's area as a percent of the country's land area (FAO item 6601) for the same year; null for the denominator items themselves and where land area is unpublished. (unit: percent)
share_of_agri_land_pct	float	For the agricultural components (cropland, arable land, permanent crops, permanent meadows and pastures, temporary crops/fallow/meadows, land equipped for irrigation): the category's area as a percent of the country's agricultural land (FAO item 6610) for the same year; null for the 'Agricultural land' row itself. (unit: percent)
pct_change_10y	float	Percent change in the category's area vs the same country and category exactly 10 years earlier (null in the first 10 years and across publication gaps). (unit: percent)
fao_flag	string	FAO observation flag for the area cell (A = official figure, E = estimated value, I = imputed, L = missing, X = external organization). (unit: string)
row_hash	string	Deterministic 16-hex SHA-256 hash over the area, item, year, raw area and the FAO flag; changes whenever any raw input cell changes. (unit: string)

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

area_code	area_code_m49	area	item_code	item	year	area_1000ha	share_of_land_area_pct	share_of_agri_land_pct	pct_change_10y	fao_flag	row_hash
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,961	65,286	—	—	—	A	182f720f55e8a45e
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,962	65,286	—	—	—	A	24b70f80d9b70204
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,963	65,286	—	—	—	A	1ca0741e1ba17c5e
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,964	65,286	—	—	—	A	9844d7d84101e8d7
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,965	65,286	—	—	—	A	8a72c3c965dfc941
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,966	65,286	—	—	—	A	7b7afb24756f5fe4
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,967	65,286	—	—	—	A	010cd4a03e9a555f
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,968	65,286	—	—	—	A	4d5407484d6233f4
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,969	65,286	—	—	—	A	4a6cc09f0de950ce
2	004	Afghanistan	6600	Country area	1,970	65,286	—	—	—	A	6da35ca9203bfb77

Profiled Oct 11, 2026 from snapshot 20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a

Measured

Completeness: 92.9%
Rows: 139,165
Columns: 12
Columns with gaps: 3

Rows per yearyear · 1961–2024 · 64 years

19612024

Column	Missing	Distinct	Range	Distribution
area_codevarchar	0%	229	—	10683 100683 101683
area_code_m49varchar	0%	229	—	004683 008683 032683
areavarchar	0%	239	—	Afghanistan683 Albania683 Argentina683
item_codevarchar	0%	11	—	660114,228 660014,227 661013,793
itemvarchar	0%	11	—	Land area14,228 Country area14,227 Agricultural land13,793
yearbigint	0%	63	1,961 → 2,024median 2,000
area_1000hadouble	0%	36,002	0 → 2,248,431median 635.38	1,392 outside 1st–99th percentile
share_of_land_area_pctdouble	20.4%	80,884	0 → 100.77median 6.67	1,108 outside 1st–99th percentile
share_of_agri_land_pctdouble	43.2%	63,969	0 → 100.01median 18.16	4 outside 1st–99th percentile
pct_change_10ydouble	21.7%	56,949	-100 → 1,863,171median 0	2,141 outside 1st–99th percentile
fao_flagvarchar	0%	4	—	I83,123 A52,681 X2,197
row_hashvarchar	0%	152,709	—	00008b9a98774fec1 000111d364ebce8a1 00029944693d73001

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_landuse_intel/land_use_area_annual" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_landuse_intel/land_use_area_annual").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/faostat_landuse_intel/land_use_area_annual

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.

Cite this snapshot

Pinned to snapshot 20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.

APA

FAOSTAT Land Use Intelligence. (2026). FAO agricultural land-use area panel (1961-2024) [Data set, snapshot 20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a, sha256 9a8627db7a7a]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-10-11, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/faostat_landuse_intel/land_use_area_annual?snapshot=20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a

BibTeX

@misc{dz_faostat_landuse_intel_land_use_area_annu_9a8627db,
  title        = {{FAO agricultural land-use area panel (1961-2024)}},
  author       = {{FAOSTAT Land Use Intelligence}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Datazimuts},
  howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/faostat_landuse_intel/land_use_area_annual?snapshot=20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a}},
  note         = {Snapshot 20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a, sha256 9a8627db7a7aa14ad9b99c40df26919b81952b6f6938fc19b9446489a0f45986; accessed 2026-10-11}
}

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<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=faostat_landuse_intel%2Fland_use_area_annual&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20261010T162633Z-9a8627db7a7a&x=year&y=year&agg=avg" title="FAO agricultural land-use area panel (1961-2024)" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>