1. International organizations generally define land degradation as human-induced declines in the conditions of soil, water, and biodiversity.
2. Land degradation is difficult to assess due to the varying definitions, the complex underlying factors, and a range of assessment methodologies.
3. A reasonable estimate is that about a quarter of global lands are degraded.
4. Agriculture is the primary driver of land degradation; grazing is the largest component, and the management and expansion of croplands is the second largest.
5. Animal ag includes grazing and more than a third of croplands used for feed, making it the central driver of global land degradation.
Many international organizations define, measure, and refer to “land degradation,” while in the U.S. it is much less common. The term is rarely used by U.S. federal agencies.
Therefore, we explore the term first on a global level (on this page) and then use that understanding to explore how U.S. agriculture and animal ag impact the changes in land conditions known as land degradation (on the following pages).[1]
See, Land Degradation & Animal Ag
In simple terms, land degradation is “the persistent decline or loss of soil, water, and biodiversity.”[1]
The IPCC confirms that “Land degradation processes can affect the soil, water or biotic components of the land as well as the reactions between them.”[2]
In more detail, land degradation refers to the overall decline in the value, productivity, and ecological integrity of land caused by human activities.[3-5]
The term encompasses a wide variety of land conditions such as erosion, compaction, desertification, salinization, loss of nutrients, changes in water resources, and loss of biodiversity.[6]
Land degradation is distinguished from soil degradation. Because soil degradation is one of the major indicators of land degradation, all soil degradation is land degradation, while not all land degradation is soil degradation. Soil degradation is the most commonly studied aspect of land degradation.[7]
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2022). The Global Land Outlook, second edition. UNCCD, Bonn, p. 2.
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (P.R. Shukla, et al., eds.), p. 354.
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land, p. 349. [“…land degradation is defined as a negative trend in land condition, caused by direct or indirect human-induced processes including anthropogenic climate change, expressed as long-term reduction or loss of at least one of the following: biological productivity, ecological integrity or value to humans.”]
Gibbs, H. K., & Salmon, J. M. (2015). Mapping the world’s degraded lands. Applied Geography (Sevenoaks), 57, 12–21, p. 13. [“There is nearly universal consensus that degradation can be defined as a reduction in productivity of the land or soil due to human activity.”]
Arneth, A., et al., (2021). Restoring Degraded Lands. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, p. 574. [“Changes in land condition resulting solely from natural processes are not considered land degradation. By defining degradation as a negative trend, the baseline for the detection of degradation is the beginning of the period of interest, rather than an arbitrary historical date.”]
Gauri Shakar Gupta (2019). Land Degradation and Challenges of Food Security, Rev. of European Studies, Vol 11, No.1, p. 64.
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land, p. 354. [“Across land degradation processes, those affecting the soil have received more attention.”]
In a 2018 landmark study, the IPBES boldly declared that “degradation of the Earth’s land surface through human activities is negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction, and costing more than 10 per cent of the annual global gross product in loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.”[1]
The impacts of land degradation are interconnected and include:
Food insecurity – due to declining soil nutrients and reduced water retention in soils.[2]
Increasing GHG emissions – as soil carbon and nitrous oxide are released into the atmosphere, adding to climate change.[3] Carbon storage in the world’s soils is larger than the volume of the planet’s biomass and atmosphere combined.[4-6]
Biodiversity loss – as both an indicator and a cause of land degradation, now transgressing planetary boundaries on most global lands.[7]
Flooding – due to reductions in the soil’s ability to absorb and retain water which leads to greater surface runoff during rainfall events.[8,9]
Desertification – from the expansion of crops and grazing lands in drylands and the overexploitation of soil and water resources.[10]
Forced migration – due to loss of arable land and conflicts over diminishing natural resources.[11]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.). Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. xx.
UN Convention to Combat Desertification (2022). Global Land Outlook 2nd ed. Summary, p. 2. [“If current land degradation trends continue this century, scientists predict that severe climate-induced disturbances will increase. These include disruptions to food supplies, forced migration, and continued biodiversity loss and extinction.”]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (P.R. Shukla, et al., eds.), Technical Summary, p. 55. [“Better management of soils can offset 5–20% of current global anthropogenic GHG emissions.”]
Zomer, R. J., et al., (2017). Global sequestration potential of increased organic carbon in cropland soils. Scientific reports, 7(1), 15554, p. 1. [“The global soil carbon (C) pool to one-meter depth, estimated at 2500 Pg C, of which about 1500 Pg C is soil organic carbon (SOC), is about 3.2 times the size of the atmospheric pool and 4 times that of the biotic pool.”]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land, Chapter 2, p. 203. [Assessing soil organic carbon down to 1 meter depth: “These values are four to eight times larger than the carbon stock associated with the terrestrial vegetation”]
Doetterl, S., et al., (2016). Erosion, deposition and soil carbon: A review of process-level controls, experimental tools and models to address C cycling in dynamic landscapes. Earth-Science Reviews, 154, 102-122, p. 103. [“Storing around four times more C than aboveground vegetation and three times more than the atmosphere…”]
Stenzel, F., et al., (2025). Breaching planetary boundaries: Over half of global land area suffers critical losses in functional biosphere integrity. One Earth, 8(8), p. 3. [For biosphere integrity, “Aggregating local transgressions to the planetary scale, we find that, today, more than half (60%) of the global land area has transgressed the local boundary, with 38% in the high-risk zone.”]
Rogger, M., et al., (2017). Land use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale: Challenges and opportunities for future research. Water resources research, 53(7), 5209-5219, p. 5210. [“The intensification of agricultural practices has resulted in the formation of platy dense soil horizons with preferential lateral flow which may reduce and/or retard vertical infiltration in the soils, but cause an intensification of lateral mass flow besides the reduced filter and buffer processes in deeper soil horizons.”]
Pimentel, D., et al., (1995). Environmental and Economic Costs of Soil Erosion and Conservation Benefits. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 267(5201), 1117–1123, p. 1120. [“About 880M tons of agricultural soils are deposited into American reservoirs and aquatic systems each year, reducing their flood-control benefits, clogging waterways, and increasing operating costs of water treatment facilities.”]
UN Convention to Combat Desertification (2022). Global Land Outlook 2nd ed. Summary, p. 42. [“Desertification is defined as land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas that occurs due to climatic variations and human activities… The primary human drivers of desertification coupled with climate change, are the expansion of crop and grazing lands, and the over-exploitation of soil and water resources.”]
International Organization for Migration and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2019). Addressing the Land Degradation – Migration Nexus: The Role of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. IOM, Geneva.
There is no single agreed-upon definition.[1,2] Even within the U.N., different agencies use different metrics.[3] There are a range of assessment models, each with inherent limitations.[4,5] The term encompasses a wide variety of land conditions such as erosion, compaction, desertification, salinization, loss of nutrients, changes in water resources, and loss of biodiversity.[6] There is a paucity of data in a complex and relatively young field of study with few credible databases.[7,8]
Kang Jiang, et al., (2024). Global land degradation hotspots based on multiple methods and indicators. Ecological Indicators, 158, 111462, p. 1. [“Land degradation is a complex concept with various definitions.”]
Gibbs, H. K., & Salmon, J. M. (2015). Mapping the world’s degraded lands. Applied Geography (Sevenoaks), 57, 12–21, p. 13. [“Simply to define “degradation” is challenging and likely contributes to the apparent variance in estimates.”]
Wuepper, D., et al., (2021). A ‘debt’ based approach to land degradation as an indicator of global change. Global Change Biology, 27(21), 5407-5410, p. 5407. [“The United Nations is a good example of an organization using multiple definitions. The different definitions provide valuable, but divergent, spatial assessments of land degradation.”]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (P.R. Shukla, et al., eds.), p. 363. [Report notes the “four main approaches to map the global extent of degraded lands” as expert opinions, satellite observation of vegetation greenness, biophysical models (biogeographical/ topological) and inventories of land use.]
Herrick, J. E., et al., (2025). A proposal for simplifying and increasing the value of local to global land degradation monitoring. Cambridge Prisms: Drylands, 2, e8, p. 1. [“Perhaps the most widely cited example is woody species invasion of grasslands, which often results in an improvement in NPP (net primary production) indicators (including satellite-based “greening”), but is associated with degradation in many ecosystems.”]
Gauri Shakar Gupta (2019). Land Degradation and Challenges of Food Security, Rev. of European Studies, Vol 11, No.1, p. 64.
IPBES (2019). The global assessment report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, (S. Diaz, et al., eds.) p. 120. [“Degradation is hard to measure, given a paucity of data and the absence of estimates, especially in the tropics.”]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land, p. 348. [“The current global extent, severity and rates of land degradation are not well quantified. There is no single method by which land degradation can be measured objectively and consistently over large areas because it is such a complex and value-laden concept.”]
Given the wide range of assessments, using the IPCC’s estimate of “about a quarter” is a reasonable choice. They reported in 2019, “About a quarter of the Earth’s ice-free land area is subject to human-induced degradation (medium confidence).”[1]
Other estimates vary widely from about 10% to almost 50%,[2] and most fall between 15-25%.[3,4]
A detailed 2021 FAO analysis of land status in 2015 is highly credible, though it also embeds some of the uncertainty. The report estimates that about 13% of the world’s ice-free land has clearly undergone human-induced land degradation with an additional 30% of land “subject to deterioration” of possibly human origins. They conclude that about 18% of total land has been subject to human-induced degradation.[5-7]
Even within the U.N., different agencies come to different conclusions.[8]
Many media reports have inaccurately used “about 40%” as the U.N. estimate for total land degradation, a term understood to include only human-induced degradation. Obviously, there is no clear consensus as to the extent of global land degradation.[9]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, (P.R. Shukla, et al., eds.), Chapter 4, p. 7. [After an extensive review of sources, the report concludes: “Nevertheless, the different attempts to map the extent of global land degradation using remotely sensed proxies show some convergence and suggest that about a quarter of the ice-free land area is subject to some form of land degradation (limited evidence, medium agreement) affecting about 3.2 billion people (low confidence).” The term “land degradation” is defined as meaning “human-induced.”]
Gibbs, H. K., & Salmon, J. M. (2015). Mapping the world’s degraded lands. Applied geography, 57, 12-21. [Reviews a wide range of credible sources with estimates below 10% to ones above 50%.]
UNCCD Proportion of Degraded Land Over the Total Land Area. https://data.unccd.int/land-degradation?grouping=UNCCD [For 2019, 15.98% of land is reported as degraded. This is based on self-reporting by many countries (and not including the U.S., Russia, Brazil, and other countries).]
UN Convention to Combat Desertification (2022). Global Land Outlook 2nd ed. [“In 2019, an analysis of national reports submitted to the UNCCD conservatively estimated that on average 20% of global land is degraded to some extent.” at p. 2. “Most assessments show that between 20-40% of the global land area is degraded or degrading to varying extents and degrees.” at p. xvi]
Ruben Coppus (2023). The global distribution of human-induced land degradation and areas at risk. SOLAW21 Technical background report. Rome, FAO, Table 7. [1,660M hectares degraded of 13,148M total ice free acres = 12.6%.]
For detailed on-line dataset from Coppus above, see, FAO (2025) Human-induced degraded land by country and land cover/land use type (Guilia Conchedda, producer). https://zenodo.org/records/15283478
FAO (2022). The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture – Systems at breaking point. Rome, p. 56. [Of the 5,670M hectares declining, about 41% is considered “human-induced.” 5,670 * .41 = 2,325 / 13,148 total land = 17.7%]
Wuepper, D., et al., (2021). A ‘debt’ based approach to land degradation as an indicator of global change. Global Change Biology, 27(21), 5407-5410, p. 5407. [“The United Nations is a good example of an organization using multiple definitions. The different definitions provide valuable, but divergent, spatial assessments of land degradation.”]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al. (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. 236. [“…progress towards a credible measure of the extent of land degradation remains elusive … at the global scale, the spatial locations and severity of degradation remain substantially unknown.” This report deeply explores the difficulties of assessing degradation, given the immense numbers of properties that could be measured and the wide variations in ecosystems.]
Yes, agriculture is the primary driver.[1,2] Globally, agricultural land degradation is estimated at more than 60% of all land degradation.[3]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. 141. [“Rapid expansion and inappropriate management of agricultural lands (including both grazing lands and croplands), especially in dryland ecosystems, is the most extensive land degradation driver globally.”]
Ruben Coppus (2023). The global distribution of human-induced land degradation and areas at risk. SOLAW21 Technical background report. Rome, FAO, p. iv. [“Grazing is the most common occurring driver of human-induced degradation, followed by accessibility and agricultural expansion.”]
For detailed on-line dataset from Coppus above, see, FAO (2025) Human-induced degraded land by country and land cover/land use type (Guilia Conchedda, producer). [Agricultural degradation (1,038,342,273 hectares) is ~63% of total land degradation (1,651,468,927 hectares)]
Grazing is considered the number one driver of global land degradation, followed by cropland expansion.[1-3]
Agricultural expansion of croplands and grazing lands have devastating impacts on forests and particularly on rainforests, the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth.[4]
Ruben Coppus (2023). The global distribution of human-induced land degradation and areas at risk. SOLAW21 Technical background report. Rome, FAO, p. iv. [“Grazing is the most common occurring driver of human-induced degradation, followed by accessibility and agricultural expansion.”]
For detailed on-line dataset from Coppus above, see, FAO (2025) Human-induced degraded land by country and land cover/land use type (Guilia Conchedda, producer). [Agricultural degradation (1,038,342,273 hectares) is ~63% of total land degradation (1,651,468,927 hectares). Of total degradation, grazing is responsible for ~34% and cropland is responsible for ~29%.]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. v. [“While the unsustainable management of croplands and grazing lands is currently the most extensive direct driver of land degradation, climate change can exacerbate the impacts of land degradation and can limit options for addressing land degradation.”]
United Nations (2024). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024, p. 38. [“Agricultural expansion drove almost 90 per cent of global deforestation; cropland accounted for 49.6 per cent and livestock grazing for 38.5 per cent.”]
According to the FAO, 31% of global croplands is considered degraded due to anthropogenic processes. An additional 18% is rated as “deteriorated.”[1,2]
Cropland soils have lost huge shares of soil organic carbon (SOC), perhaps a third to a half.[3] SOC is a central measure of soil health, in turn a key measure of land degradation.[4]
Highlighting the fact that definitions of degradation are key, one recent report places the share of arable lands facing “degradation processes” at about 80%.[5]
Ruben Coppus (2023). The global distribution of human-induced land degradation and areas at risk. SOLAW21 Technical background report. Rome, FAO, Table 11, p. 23. [“Almost a third of rainfed cropland and nearly half of irrigated land is subject to human-induced land degradation processes.”]
Gauri Shakar Gupta (2019). Land Degradation and Challenges of Food Security, Rev. of European Studies, Vol 11, No.1, p. 64. [“Evidence based on research suggests that since 1950, over 35 percent of agricultural land has been degraded in varied degrees due to human induced activities.”]
IPCC (2019). Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (P.R. Shukla, et al., eds.), Technical Summary, p. 53. [“Cropland soils have lost 20–60% of their organic carbon content prior to cultivation, and soils under conventional agriculture continue to be a source of GHGs.”]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany. 744 pages. p. 225. [“The loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) has negative impacts on soil biodiversity and soil water and nutrient holding capacity.”]
Prăvălie, R., et al., (2021). Arable lands under the pressure of multiple land degradation processes. A global perspective. Environmental Research, 194, 110697, p. 10. [“Around 80% of global arable lands are currently affected by at least one of the five studied land degradation processes.” i.e., aridity, soil erosion, vegetation decline, soil salinization and soil organic carbon decline.]
About 35 to 40% of global croplands is used for animal feed.[1-3]
Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992, Supplemental Material, Table S10. [“Arable land and permanent crops” to feed and fallow feed = 116Mha + 422 / 1415 = 38.0%]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. 151. [“Worldwide, an estimated 33-39% of all crop production is used for animal feed and meat production.”]
Foley, J. A., et al., (2011). Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature, 478(7369), 337-342, p. 338. [“Globally, only 62% of crop production (on a mass basis) is allocated to human food, versus 35% to animal feed (which produces human food indirectly, and much less efficiently, as meat and dairy products) and 3% for bioenergy, seed and other industrial products.” Highly cited though outdated and likely underestimated given the growth of factory farming in the interim.]
There are no conclusive stats on this complex question. Naturally the answer depends on the chosen study, the definitions, and the inclusion or exclusion of different types of grazing lands, i.e., grasslands, rangelands, and/or pasture.
A reasonable estimate is that ~15-30% of global grazing lands are degraded.[1-3] However, there are widely varying claims even among UN bodies.[4]
Over half of global grazing lands are in drylands highly susceptible to degradation.[5] Climate change will undoubtedly drive additional degradation in grazing lands.[6,7]
Ruben Coppus (2023). The global distribution of human-induced land degradation and areas at risk. SOLAW21 Technical background report. Rome, FAO, Table 11, p. 23. [Notes “grasslands” at 13% “degraded” and an additional 34% “deteriorated.”]
UNCCD (2024). Global Land Outlook Thematic Report on Rangelands and Pastoralism. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Bonn, p. 15. [Notes that according to the FAO, “up to 35 per cent of grasslands are at risk of degradation, with other rangelands showing significant risk at 26-27 per cent.”]
FAO (2022). The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture – Systems at breaking point, Rome, Table 1.10, p. 61. [“Grassland area at risk” = 35%.]
UNCCD (May 21, 2024) News Release: ‘Silent Demise’ of Vast Rangelands Threatens Climate, Food, Wellbeing of Billions, p. 1. [“Rangelands cover 54% of all land; as much as 50% are degraded…”]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.) Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. 141. [“Over half of grazing lands occur in dryland environments that are highly susceptible to land degradation (established but incomplete).”]
Steinfeld, H., et al., (2019). Overview paper: Livestock, Climate and Natural Resource Use, Kansas State Univ., p. 6. [“…the effects of climate change on livestock… are expected to be most severe in arid and semi-arid grazing systems at low latitudes, where higher temperatures and lower rainfall is expected to reduce rangeland yields and increase degradation. Predicted changes in climate and weather are likely to result in more variable pasture productivity and quality, increased livestock heat stress, greater pest and weed effects, more frequent and longer droughts, more intense rainfall events, and greater risks of soil erosion.”]
Bundy, L. R., et al., (2025). United States pasture and rangeland conditions: 1995–2022. Agronomy Journal, 117(1), e21736. Abstract [“Overall, continued regional climatic changes that may result in increasing temperatures, variable precipitation totals, and subsequent soil moisture declines leading to increased drought instances will continue to impose challenges for grazing land managers.”]
Yes, animal agriculture is clearly the primary driver of global land degradation.
As noted above, agricultural production is responsible for more than half of all land degradation. And since animal agriculture includes grazing – the number one driver of land degradation – as well as more than a third of all cropland degradation, animal agriculture is clearly the primary driver of land degradation.
Though the great majority of reports ignore the outsized impacts of animal ag, the occasional statement addresses the sector’s huge contribution to land degradation.[1]
Per the UNCCD, “A transition to plant-based diets, where appropriate, would be a logical first step as nearly 80% of total agricultural land is dedicated to feed and livestock production while providing less than 20% of the world’s food calories.”[2]
IPBES (2018). The IPBES assessment report on land degradation and restoration. Montanarella, L., et al., (eds.). Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany, p. 150. [“Many studies have shown that modifying diets provides ample opportunities to meet societal demands without amplifying existing pressures on natural ecosystems (Bajželj et al., 2014; Cassidy et al., 2013; Herrero et al., 2016; LeMouël et al., 2016; Mora et al., 2016)…”]
UNCCD (2022). United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2022) Global Land Outlook 2nd ed. p. 5.