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Data

Area of permanent meadows and pastures

UN FAO
See all data and research on:
Agricultural Production

What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer - UN FAO?

Item: Permanent meadows and pastures

Description: Land used permanently (five years or more) to grow herbaceous forage crops through cultivation or naturally (wild prairie or grazing land). Permanent meadows and pastures on which trees and shrubs are grown should be recorded under this heading only if the growing of forage crops is the most important use of the area. Measures may be taken to keep or increase productivity of the land (i.e., use of fertilizers, mowing or systematic grazing by domestic animals.) This class includes: • Grazing in wooded areas (agroforestry areas, for example); • Grazing in shrubby zones (heath, maquis, garigue); • Grassland in the plain or low mountain areas used for grazing: land crossed during transhumance where the animals spend a part of the year (approximately 100 days) without returning to the holding in the evening: mountain and subalpine meadows and similar; and steppes and dry meadows used for pasture.

Metric: Area

Description: Extent of surface of land or water.

Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 25, 2026
Next expected update
February 2027
Date range
1961–2023
Unit
hectares

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use

The FAOSTAT Land Use domain contains data on twenty-one land use categories and twenty-three categories of irrigation and agricultural practices. Data are available yearly and by country, regional and global levels. The domain includes Land Use Indicators providing information on the percentage share of agricultural and forest land, and their sub-components, including irrigated areas and areas under organic agriculture, within a country land use matrix. Data are available at country, regional and global level, for the following elements: (in percentage) i) Share in Land area; ii) Share in Agricultural land, iii) Share in Cropland; and iv) Share in Forest land; (in ha/pc) v) Area per capita.

Retrieved on
February 25, 2026
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use (2025).

The FAOSTAT Land Use domain contains data on twenty-one land use categories and twenty-three categories of irrigation and agricultural practices. Data are available yearly and by country, regional and global levels. The domain includes Land Use Indicators providing information on the percentage share of agricultural and forest land, and their sub-components, including irrigated areas and areas under organic agriculture, within a country land use matrix. Data are available at country, regional and global level, for the following elements: (in percentage) i) Share in Land area; ii) Share in Agricultural land, iii) Share in Cropland; and iv) Share in Forest land; (in ha/pc) v) Area per capita.

Retrieved on
February 25, 2026
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/RL
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use (2025).

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All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Area of permanent meadows and pastures”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Agricultural Production”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Area of permanent meadows and pastures – UN FAO” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Land, Inputs and Sustainability: Land Use” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/area-of-permanent-meadows-and-pastures.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear