Natural grazing is probably the most widespread land-use worldwide; sound statistics are not available, but in developing countries at least, in addition to "permanent pasture," much of the areas listed as forest, wasteland or desert (excepting the most barren and waterless wastes) are grazed at some point in the year. Extensive livestock rearing is the main means of obtaining an economic output - meat, dairy products, fibres - from such land; these production systems are low-input and rely on the natural vegetation, unlike farm-based intensive livestock rearing. They require great mobility and space so that stock can be moved according to availability of feed, as influenced by rainfall or season.

In the semi-arid regions of industrialized countries, stock rearing is typically on very large private holdings (ranches in North America) that have sufficient space to allow some buffering against seasonal differences in feed availability. The traditional pastoral sector, however, operates in areas where land title is less well defined and individual herds are usually much smaller than those of ranches; it often relies, therefore, on mobility (including transhumance and nomadism) within land shared by many households, and sometimes several ethnic groups.