Kingdom of Saudi Arabia · Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture · National Study
National Agricultural Land Evaluation
A national assessment of where agriculture is physically possible, adequately watered, legally permitted, and suited to a named crop. The Kingdom is screened, then evaluated hectare by hectare, then grouped into developable zones. This page explains how that works before any module is opened.
Assessed66 elements · 19 groups
Unit of Assessment1 hectare
MethodNation → Hectare → Zone
BasisSatellite & desk-based
FrameworkFAO land evaluation
01 · The Method
Four questions, four separate answers
Every hectare in the Kingdom is asked four independent questions. Each is answered by its own module, in its own notation, against its own evidence. They are never combined into a single score — because a hectare that is physically excellent but legally barred is not “averagely good”. It is unavailable, and only one of the four answers tells you so.
Can the land support it?
Capability
The physical ground — soil, terrain, climate, drainage. Assessed once, independent of what is grown on it.
C1C2C3C4CN
Will the water bear it?
Water
Source, volume, quality, sustainability and basin allocation. Assessed separately from the land, never folded inside it.
W1W2W3W4W0
Does the law allow it?
Land Rights & Constraints
Protection, ownership, zoning and competing designations. Six checks against six separate registers held by different authorities.
E1E2E3E0
How well would this crop do?
Suitability
The same measurements read again — this time against one named crop’s own tolerances rather than a general threshold.
S1S2S3N1N2
Three gates must all open. A hectare must be capable, watered and permitted before suitability is worth asking. Any one of the three failing stops the hectare — and the assessment records which one, because a military exclusion cannot be moved while an unrecorded title can.
02 · Depth of Analysis
What is evaluated, and how much of it
Each module assesses a defined set of elements, organised into groups. The individual elements are specified in each module — what matters here is the scale of the analysis: sixty-six separate determinations on every hectare that reaches assessment, drawn from nineteen analytical groups across four independent evaluations.
Soil Physical4
Soil Chemical4
Water & Drainage3
Topography & Erosion4
Climate4
Capability
19 land qualities · 5 groups
Source & Availability3
Sustainability3
Water Quality5
Access & Delivery2
Basin Allocation2
Water
15 parameters · 5 groups
Environmental Status2
Land Rights & Tenure2
Restrictions & Exclusions2
Land Rights & Constraints
6 checks · 3 groups
Soil Physical6
Soil Chemical6
Water & Drainage3
Topography & Erosion4
Climate5
Crop-Specific2
Suitability
26 diagnostic factors · 6 groups
66 elements × 1 hectare = 66 determinations 66 elements × [ assessment area, pending ] hectares = the national computation
… and the 26 suitability factors are re-read against each candidate crop’s own thresholds, so the crop layer multiplies again by the number of crops assessed.
91
measured parameters in the crop requirement library
1,268
crop threshold records loaded and source-validated
63
crops registered in the national crop library
7
separate authorities screened for the legal answer
03 · Where the Study Starts, and Where it Lands
Nation → Hectare → Zone
The study begins at national scale and ends at the scale a decision is actually made. First the Kingdom is screened to remove land that is definitionally unavailable. What survives is assessed one hectare at a time. Adjacent hectares carrying the same answers are then grouped into zones — blocks large enough and uniform enough to be developed under a single plan.
Step 1 · Nation
Screen the Kingdom
Remove land already allocated to other activities, land that is not land, terrain that is physically impossible, and ground that is legally barred.
Output — the assessment area
→
screen
Step 2 · Hectare
Assess every hectare
Each 1-hectare cell is evaluated against all 66 elements and emerges carrying four independent results — capability, water, legal and, per crop, suitability.
Output — C2s · W1 · E1
→
group
Step 3 · Zone
Group into zones
Adjacent hectares sharing the same capability, water and legal answer merge into one block, large enough to develop under a single management plan.
Output — the zone map and area ledger
Why one hectare
ResolutionSentinel-2 imagery at 10 m aggregates cleanly into a 1-hectare cell without resampling artefacts.
PrecisionFine enough that a zone boundary follows a real change in the ground rather than an arbitrary grid line.
TractabilityCoarse enough that a full national run across 66 elements remains computable.
PracticeIt is the unit in which land is allocated, transacted and reported.
04 · Step 1 in Detail
National exclusion — what is removed before anything is assessed
The first pass removes only land that is definitionally unavailable — not land that scores poorly. Nothing here is a judgement: it is a filter. A slope of twelve percent is not excluded, because that is a capability question. Land with no water within economic reach is not excluded, because that is a water question. Only ground that cannot be agricultural under any assessment comes out at this stage.
StageArea (ha)ShareReversible
Total national area
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
215,000,000
100.0%
—
−Allocated to other activities
Urban and built-up · roads, rail, airports and ports · industrial cities and MODON zones
pending
pending
NO
−Not land
Water bodies · permanent wetland · active sabkha flats
pending
pending
NO
−Physically impossible
Cliff and escarpment · exposed rock outcrop · active dune fields
pending
pending
NO
−Legally barred
NCW gazetted protected areas · military exclusion zones · petroleum blocks · active mining concessions
pending
pending
BY AUTHORITY
=Assessment area
Every hectare here is evaluated against all 66 elements
pending
pending
—
What was removed matters as much as what remains. Three of these four families are permanent — a city, a cliff and a lake will not become farmland. The fourth is different: land that is legally barred is not gone, it is held by another authority. A petroleum block expires, a mining concession lapses, a designation is revised. On a ten-year planning horizon that is a materially different proposition from a coastline, and the assessment records it separately for exactly that reason.
What is deliberately not excluded here
Steep slopeAssessed as a capability class, not a bar — terrain limits what can be grown and how, but rarely removes land entirely.
No nearby waterAssessed by the Water module as a distance and conveyance question, which changes when infrastructure changes.
Unrecorded ownershipRecorded as E2 — resolvable. This is the most common finding in the Kingdom and it is a paperwork constraint, not a land one.
Saline or gypsum soilA class, not a bar. Severe soil chemistry limits crop choice; it does not make the ground unassessable.
05 · Reading a Result
One hectare, four answers
Every assessed hectare carries its four results in four separate notations. Each answer names not only its class but the reason for it — the subclass letter identifies which family of limitation governed the outcome, so a finding can be acted on rather than merely recorded.
C2s·W1·E1·S2z
C2s
Capable, with a moderate limitation
Class 2 of five. The subclass s names the cause — a soil physical quality is what held it back.
W1
Water usable without constraint
Source, volume, quality and allocation all pass. No subclass, because nothing limited the result.
E1
Legally clear
All six checks pass across six registers. Rarer than it looks nationally — unrecorded tenure alone puts most non-urban land at E2.
S2z
Moderately suitable for the named crop
The subclass z names salinity as the governing limitation for this crop specifically.
The four series are never mixed. A hectare is not described as “C2/S3” in a single token. Each notation answers a different question and carries a different meaning, so each is reported in its own series. Only the Suitability module uses S1–N2; only Capability uses C1–CN.
06 · From Assessment to Decision
The zone — where the study becomes usable
No decision is made about a single hectare. A zone is a contiguous group of hectares sharing the same capability, water and legal answer — uniform enough that one management plan works across all of it, and large enough to be worth developing.
assessed hectares
→
ZONE
one geometry
+
S2z Date palm — irrigated orchard
S3c Wheat — centre pivot
S1 Tomato — protected
N1z Tomato — open field
crop verdicts as attributes
Zones are crop-agnostic by design. Their boundaries come from capability, water and legal state only. Crop suitability attaches to a zone as an attribute rather than a boundary — so the Kingdom has one stable zone map, not one map per crop. Adding crops adds columns, not geometry, and every crop becomes directly comparable because all of them are measured on the same block.
The Zoning module sets out the rules in full — how zone boundaries are drawn, the minimum viable area for each production system, and the administrative hierarchy from nation to province to governorate to zone.
07 · The Governing Rule
The worst element sets the class
This single rule governs all four modules. A class is never an average, and no element is weighted above another. If one element is severe, the class is severe — regardless of how favourable everything else is.
19 land qualities assessedclass taken from the worst ↑
A hectare rated excellent on eighteen of nineteen land qualities and severe on one is classed by the one. This is the FAO limiting factor principle, and it reflects how land actually behaves: a crop cannot average its way past a rooting depth of twenty centimetres because the climate is favourable. The binding constraint binds. Reporting an average would conceal exactly the information a planner needs.
08 · Scope and Limits
What this study does not do
Stated plainly, because the value of the assessment depends on it being used for what it can answer.
No field survey
The study is entirely satellite-based and desk-based. No ground truthing or field sampling is conducted, and no finding should be read as a site inspection.
Planning-level screening
Results identify where detailed investigation is warranted. They do not replace site-specific soil survey, hydrogeological study or engineering assessment.
Not a legal opinion
The legal answer screens existing records. It does not confirm title. Every check names the authority holding the record, so a finding can be taken to the right office.
Not an economic appraisal
These findings answer whether agriculture is possible and permitted, not whether it is profitable. Physical and legal questions are kept deliberately separate from cost.