IELTS Academic writing: Reasons why agricultural land becomes less productive

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 1990’s. 

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant. 

Answer 1:

The information illustrated in the graphical representation gives insights into) various reasons behind cultivating land becoming less productive. The tabular data describes how those factors impacted three parts of the earth during the period of 90s.  

Overall, although the most noteworthy cause behind downgrading of agricultural land quality is over-grazing by animals as per the diagrammatic representation , but, the tabular data , highlights Europe as the region with maximum loss and  also gives different weight to other factors too depending upon the location under discussion. 

First of all, grazing of land by animals and cutting of trees are the most notorious reasons behind the degradation of land quality and contribute 35 % and 30 % respectively. Over-cultivation as a cause is very close in percentage to be the third highest contributor towards the loss.

Moreover, the data in picture shows a more diverse picture when seen in combination with the statistics in the tabular form.Europe has faced the maximum loss, with 23% of its land rendered less productive.But, the factors contributing to maximum loss were deforestation and over-cultivation, but over grazing. Similarly, Oceania, a group of islands in South Pacific, Australia and New-Zealand, as a region was maximum affected by over-grazing up to a level of 11.3 %. North America saw least amount of land affected, standing at 5% and that too by over-cultivation. 

Band 7

Answer 2:

The pie chart illustrates the factors behind global land degradation, while the table represents percentage of degradation in three regions in 1990s.

Overall, it is apparent that primary reason for less productive land was over grazing and the most degraded region was Europe.

Over-grazing was the main cause of land degradation, accounting to 35%, followed closely by deforestation and over-cultivation that was 30% and 28% respectively. However, others factors contributed insignificantly to make land less productive at just 7%.

The maximum land degraded was in Europe, with principal cause of deforestation at 9.8% followed by over cultivation at 7.7%. However, the least amount of productive land was found in North America, only 5% mainly due to over-cultivation at 3.3% and unlike other areas it had negligible deforestation, merely 0.2%. Oceania, on the contrary, had biggest proportion of over grazing compared to all other regions at 11.3%, and with 1.7% of deforestation and no over cultivation, the total degraded land accounted to 13%.

Band 7