In 1970 agricultural land comprised almost 15 million acres, or 53 percent of the country's land area. Sixty-nine percent of the agricultural land was suitable for field crops; 4 percent consisted of meadows; and about 6 percent was devoted to vineyards, orchards, and other perennial crops. Natural pastures constituted more than 20 percent of the agricultural land. Bulgarian economists have repeatedly pointed out that the per capita acreage of farmland in the country, excluding pastures, is among the lowest in the world. According to official statistics the area of agricultural land increased by 840,000 acres in the 1960s as a result of the expansion of grazing areas by 1.1 million acres and the simultaneous loss of 270,000 acres of cultivated land. The loss of cultivated acreage was caused by the diversion of land to industrial and other uses and by severe soil erosion. The acreage devoted to vineyards and orchards nevertheless increased by 100,000 acres, or 12 percent. Land Protection More than half the cultivated acreage is subject to erosion. Increasingly large areas degraded by erosion have remained uncultivated each year, but they continue to be included in the annual statistics on farmland acreage. The unused area of plowland expanded from 720,000 acres in 1960 to 1.26 million acres in 1970. Another 1.5 million to 2 million acres have been reported to suffer from erosion to a degree that will make it necessary to abandon them unless corrective measures are quickly taken. Only 70 percent of the acreage under fruit trees and vineyards bore fruit in 1970. The government has long been aware of the need to arrest the loss of cultivated farmland. An intensive program of reforestation has been carried on over many years, but the rate of replanting has not been high enough to halt the ravages of erosion. Proposals advanced by agricultural experts to clear abandoned mountain farmland of noxious weeds and to develop these areas into improved pastures--measures that would also help control erosion--have not been acted upon.