Arable land

(from the arabilis, “able to be ploughed”) is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops. A more concise definition is: “land worked (ploughed or tilled) regularly, generally under a system of crop rotation”.

Non-arable land can sometimes be converted to arable land through methods such as loosening and tilling (breaking up) of the soil, though in more extreme cases the degree of modification required to make certain types of land arable can become prohibitively expensive.

In Britain, arable land has traditionally been contrasted with pasturable land such as heaths, which could be used for sheep-rearing but not as farmland.

Non-arable land
Agricultural land that is not arable includes:
 * Meadows and pastures – land used as pasture and grazed range, and those natural grasslands and sedge meadows that are used for hay production in some regions.
 * Permanent crop – land that produces crops from woody vegetation, e.g. orchard land, vineyards, coffee plantations, rubber plantations, and land producing nut trees;

Other non-arable land includes land that is not suitable for any agricultural use. Land that is not arable, in the sense of lacking capability or suitability for cultivation for crop production, has one or more limitations – a lack of sufficient freshwater for irrigation, stoniness, steepness, adverse climate, excessive wetness with the impracticality of drainage, excessive salts, or a combination of these, among others.

Land incapable of being cultivated for the production of crops can sometimes be converted to arable land. New arable land makes more food and can reduce. This outcome also makes a country more and politically independent, because food importation is reduced. Making non-arable land arable often involves digging new irrigation canals and new wells, aqueducts, planting trees for shade in the desert or digging ditches and hills for protection against the wind.

= =