Band 6+: The pie chart below shows the main reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive. The table shows how these causes affected three regions of the world during the 1990s. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The pie chart provides an overview of the primary causes of declining agricultural productivity, whilst the table displays how these factors impacted three global areas in the 1990s. When taken as a whole, the data illustrates a possible connection but this was inconsistent.

The pie chart highlights that over-grazing was the leading cause of land degradation at 35 percent, followed by over-cultivation made up of 30 percent and deforestation by 28 percent.

Europe experienced the largest land degradation among the three nations at 23 percent, with the main reason being deforestation at its highest at 9.8 percent. Similarly, Oceania is the second most land degraded with 13 percent, over-grazing accounted for approximately 11.3 percent, deforestation at 1.7 percent and over-cultivation at 0 percent, following the global pattern.

In contrast, North America shows the least correlation with the global data. While globally, over-grazing was the dominant factor of land degradation, North America ranked last between the three regions having just under 2 percent. The main cause in this region was over-cultivation at around 3 percent, resulting in the least land degraded with a total of 5 percent land degradation.

Overall the figures suggest a possible association between the main reasons for agricultural land becoming unproductive and the factors that were affected to global regions but the correlation is not consistent at one of the regions depicted.