Australia · Arable Land · % of land

## What this measures

Land in Australia under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow, as a share of total land area. FAO definition, annual, percent.

## Why it matters

Arable land is the base of a country’s food supply and its farm exports. Countries with little of it depend on imported food or on yields from what they have.

## How to read it

Read the level across countries and the direction within one. Changes are slow; a fall usually means farmland lost to cities or abandoned, a rise new land brought under the plough.

## What it does not say

It leaves out permanent crops such as orchards and vineyards and permanent pasture, and it says nothing about soil quality, water or yields. Large countries with deserts or ice sheets read low even when they farm a great deal of land.

## Source

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), FAOSTAT land use, via World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator `AG.LND.ARBL.ZS`. Licence per the World Bank’s indicator metadata and FAO’s Statistical Database Terms of Use: CC BY 4.0. Palanor rewrites the full history each week (/api/cron/sovereign-sync), so revisions carry through.