Countries with the Lowest Percentage of Arable Land
Name the countries with the lowest percentage of land that can be farmed. Hint: Think of countries with the most urban area, mountain, desert, forest, etc...
Which is weird, cause it doesnt come up under its own statistics either. It like they are trying to make it disappear. (unlike northkorea, which is trying to make itself disappear)
I guess they haven't slashed and burned like Brazil yet. You'd think if they could level a couple hundred square kilometers to plop a city of 2,000,000 people they could clear a little land to feed the nation.
The distinction between arable and agricultural land should probably be made clearer in the instructions, which make it sound like both are included. According to tradingeconomics.com, "Agricultural land is defined as the land area that is either arable, under permanent crops, or under permanent pastures. Arable land includes land under temporary crops such as cereals, temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow." Colombia, for example, has over 40% of agricultural land but less than 2% arable land.
Cocoa doesn't count I guess. I saw a fascinating piece from Vice on this and how they are trying other crops - farmers just want to be paid, they don't care about the crop. This makes more sense now, because they can't just grow anything.
Farmers are locked into whatever is marketable and transportable. They might be able to grow anything but unless a market and system of transporting the goods to market exists, it does them no good. I could grow 100 acres of brussels sprouts, but without a veggie packing plant in my area that needs them to fill orders, or a fleet of trucks to ship them to a distant packing plant, what would I do with them? Unlike manufacturing plants which can hold their goods, most farm products are perishable. Even dried grains are in danger of insect and rodent infestation or mold during storage.
I used to live in Bahrain and have driven the perimeter of the country multiple times. Where were they hiding all this farmland? There's a tree in the desert there that's a major tourist attraction because nothing else around is even alive.
Agreed 100%. Unless they are counting some generous circumference around the palm trees as they produce dates, no chance Bahrain has virtually any arable land.
Yes, I can imagine that Monaco has sprawling wheat fields and don't forget the Vatican corn belt. Honestly, there must be less arable land in Monaco than Djibouti by any metric. If anyone has seen Malta, why isn't that place on the list?
@bezz, because the quizmaker didnt go to all the countries and measured the land by hand.. He got his info from a source. And in that list there is no data for monaco and vatican like is stated in the description at the start of the quiz so I dont see why you would have to discuss how arable or not monaco is.
So what do I do? I guess those first, of course!
A presentation from Biotechnical Faculty of University of Montenegro has it at 1,900 km2 or almost 14%.