Agriculture land can be broken down into three aggregates:
*Arable land
*Permanent crop
*Permanent pasture
Arable land includes land defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture. The various uses of arable land depend primarily on technical factors and on agricultural market condition.
Permanent pasture is the land used permanently for herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild. Permanent pasture varies greatly in quality both between and within the countries. In United Kingdom and Ireland much of the pasture in mountainous areas supports only a very low density of livestock, whereas water meadows provide good supplies of fodder.
While permanent corps land cultivated with crops that occupy the land for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest, such as cocoa, coffee and rubber.
Changes in the pattern of agricultural land use from arable crops to pasture, from more to less intensive cropping systems, and terms of different cropping can have considerable environmental effects.
Some examples, enhancing the biodiversity and habitat functions provided by different cropping systems and altering the sink functions of farm land affecting the net emission of greenhouse gases from agriculture.
While the conversion of pasture to forestry, for example, can be beneficial to biodiversity it will depend on both the quality of farmed habitat loss to forestry and also whether the forest is developed commercially or left to develop naturally.
Land of agriculture
