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Arable (also known as rowcrop fields) is land that is cultivated regularly for production of food and, increasingly, bioenergy. The value of arable land to wildlife is heavily influenced by the presence of permanent grassland and other uncropped habitats along its boundaries, such as hedgerows, scattered trees, water-filled drainage ditches, grass strips, and stone walls. This chapter discusses the management of arable land. Topics covered include farming systems and crop types, minimizing pesticide and fertilizer use on field margins, providing cultivated but unsown areas within fields, minimizing destruction of birds' nests during mechanical operations, providing unharvested crops for birds to eat, and manipulating flooding regimes.

This chapter attempts to calculate the grain production and carrying capacity of Attica by analyzing five key variables: land, use of the land, crop yields, population, and consumption. Previous scholarly attempts to calculate these variables are surveyed. As part of the study of land, soil and climate are examined, as well as the extent of arable space, taking into account the use of terracing. As part of the study of land use, the conventional and revised models of Greek farming are compared. The results confirm the continuing usefulness of the former, which would indicate that half of the cultivable land of Attica required fallowing each year, and that natural fertilizers were insufficiently available to overcome this need or to escape relatively low yields. It is argued that the figures of imported grain transmitted by Demosthenes are reliable, and that recent attempts to demonstrate the opposite are unsatisfactory.

Under Imperial Land Law in traditional China all land belonged to the Emperor. No person could occupy arable land without an imperial grant. The imperial authorities acknowledged the existence of an imperial grant by accepting land tax from the grantee. Only the land tax-payer or his short-term tenant had the right to till the ground and no intermediate lordship is allowed between the cultivator and the emperor. Grants of land could be revoked if the land had changed significantly in its usage. Sometimes permissions were given to grantees to open land. The land has to be surveyed periodically to ensure that all arable were registered. However by the late nineteenth century, the surveys were done only very occasionally: coupled with the freezing of the tax quota in 1711, this meant that many people were evading land tax and a good deal of the Imperial Land Law was unenforced.

This chapter evaluates why the amount of landlessness in the world is going up dramatically. The primary cause for this is a wave of land acquisition in the Global South. China has obtained vast tracts of land in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. American, European, and Indian investors are also in the mix. Local elites are in the game as well; they are at least as active as the foreigners in land acquisitions. Whether for good reasons or bad reasons, lots of land is being sold in the Global South and cultivators are losing their homes and their livelihoods. The fact that land transfers do not involve what is officially designated as “arable” land does not mean that dispossession is not occurring. When the United States occupied Native American lands, none of that territory officially counted in the census as “arable” land, since the frontier was not cultivated by white people. Those land seizures led to three hundred years of Indian wars.