Half of the cultivated land in Mongolia is considered to be degraded to some degree. New' land brought under cultivation is mostly fodder pasture and a significant percentage of this area is marginal and environmentally unsuitable for crop production. Of this, only 12.28 million ha, or 7.85 per cent of the country’s territory, are actually covered by forests (figure 13.1). Unstocked forest areas make up 5.63 million ha, these are areas deforested due to forestry and/or non-forestry operations, overgrazing and repeated fires, and attacked by insects and diseases. The northern boreal forests comprise 84.7 per cent of the total forested area.