1.5. An overview of the state of agricultural environment

The following analysis of the trend in agricultural land use in Asia is made to illustrate the interpretation of the derived indicators. The data source for the indicators is the FAOSTAT database on Land Use Statistics. Growth rates are measured over the time period 1989-1991 to 1998-2000 and the most recent indicators refer to the average of the period 1998-2000.

(a) Agricultural area and Total area

Asia recorded the largest growth (2.5%) in the share of agricultural land to total land area over the ten year period out of all continents. This compares to a growth of 0.9% for the world and 1.6% for developing countries. Developed countries underwent a decline of 0.3%.

Although a minimal growth was noted in South Asia, the actual share remained very high at 50.0% (second only to the Caribbean). This large share was a result of the significant areas of agricultural land in Bangladesh (62.6% of total land), India (54.9%) and Sri Lanka (35.7%). Overall in the world, agricultural land makes up 37.3% of total land.

(b) Arable land & permanent crops and agricultural area

This category refers to the use of land cultivated for productive activities such as cereals, root crops, industrial crops (e.g. cotton, tobacco, oilseeds), vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants, orchards, vineyards, olives, etc.

The total agricultural area in the world amounts to 5.0 billion ha. Of this, about 1.5 billion ha (30.4%) is arable land and land under permanent crops. A decreasing growth rate of 0.3% has been noted over the ten year period.

South Asia has the largest share of arable and permanent crop land in total agricultural land (91.5%), though with a slow growth rate of 0.2% over the period under review. Within the region, India and Bangladesh have very high shares - 94.0% and 93.3% respectively. The region which follows South Asia is the Caribbean.

The same picture arises when looking at the share of arable land only in total agricultural area. Once again, the large share in South Asia is due to Bangladesh and India. In the case of permanent crops, South Asia has had the largest growth over the decade (at 10.7%), and share is 4.5%. The country within the region devoting the largest share of its land to permanent crops is Sri Lanka, with 43.3%, whereas the rest of the countries have a low share varying from between 1.8% and 4.4%.

In the world, the share of area under permanent pastures in total agricultural area is 69.6%. In South Asia, it is 8.5%, and a decline of 2.0% was recorded over the period under review. Within regional groups, only the Caribbean shows a share of less than 69%. In continental groups, Africa and South America have the highest shares - at 81.4% and 80.4% respectively.

The world average of agricultural area per agricultural worker was 3.8 ha, with a large difference noted between regional and economic groups. The largest area was recorded in developed countries, with 37.6 ha, followed by North and Central America with 30.5 ha. South Asia had the lowest figure, of 0.7 ha per agricultural worker. This could be explained by the region's increasing agricultural population pressure for agriculture land. Two countries in the region, Bhutan and Nepal, have the highest overall share of agricultural population in total population (93.8% and 93.1%).

Response indicators show that the value of agricultural production per hectare of agricultural land is highest in South Asia, at I$ 720.6. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to show the lowest value of I$ 71.8. The high value in South Asia may be due to high cropping intensity and reported low share of area under permanent pasture in total agricultural land as compared to the rest of the regions of the world.

On the contrary, the second response indicator of Agricultural GDP per agricultural worker shows South Asia the second lowest in all regions, with a value of US$ 404. Only Sub-Saharan Africa was lower with US$ 315.

(c) Irrigation

As the world moves toward increasing food security and agricultural production, irrigation has become one of the major contributing factors to achieving this goal. It is known that the large proportion of water withdrawn from rivers, lakes and aquifers mainly flows into agriculture. The efficient use of this proportion of water for high agricultural productivity will also depend on the employment of new technologies. Depending on the availability of water resources the irrigated area will vary among the regions of the world.

In the world, about 0.3 billion ha of land is irrigated, amounting to 5.4% of total agricultural land. Growth over the 1990's was 4.4%. The share of irrigated land in arable and permanent crop land amounts to 17.8%, growing at a rate of 4.8%. Asia makes up a share of 33.2% of the world's agricultural land, and 12.8% of this is irrigated (0.2 billion ha). The highest share of irrigated land was noted in South Asia, with 35.0%, and a record growth rate of 8.1%. Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular had a large portion of irrigated land in total agricultural land.

(d) Livestock

Livestock is considered an important source for the supply of energy, food and support for agricultural production necessary for the improvement of human well-being. At the same time it is important to mention that an increase in livestock population may result in inducing additional pressure on land due to overgrazing and eventually become a source for land degradation. Considering this aspect of livestock development, growth of livestock production may differ significantly across countries with varying natural endowments, mainly the land available for meadows and pastures. Therefore this analysis at the global and regional scale using the derived indicators for live animal is meant to make a broad comparison for providing a panoramic description of what seems to be happening rather than an exact measurement of the situation. For facilitating cross country comparison by taking into account all types of livestock/poultry, the number has been expressed in "livestock unit" by converting different types of livestock taking 'feed aspects' into account (see definitions on page 34 for more details).

At the global level, the number of live animals per hectare of agricultural area in livestock units (LU) was 0.33. Among regional groups, South Asia reported the highest LU/ha of 1.09, followed by the Caribbean with 0.77 LU/ha. A similar picture exists for number of live animals per hectare of permanent pastures. The overall average is 0.48 LU/ha, with South Asia reporting the highest figure of 12.84, and the Caribbean second in regional ranking, with 1.91. Near East and North Africa showed the lowest number of live animals per hectare of both permanent pasture and agriculture area, at 0.19 and 0.15 respectively. South Asia may need to watch the growth in its livestock population to ensure that it does not expand too rapidly.