Crops and pasture cover almost the entire county, and there are a few patches of woodland, some peat bogs in the southwest, and small areas of hill pasture around Slieve na Calliagh in the northwest. The landscape of the county consists almost entirely of glacial drift. Rivers include the Blackwater and the Boyne (Boyne, River). Many eskers, or long glacial gravel ridges, and deep deposits of rich glacial loam extend over a great part of Meath and north Kildare, giving the area rich agricultural and grazing lands.

Meath is well-favoured agriculturally, and it specializes in cattle raising. The farms are highly productive, and three-fourths of the farmed area is in permanent pasture. Important crops include wheat, oats, barley, potatoes, and some sugar beets and other root and green crops. There are a number of demesnes (tenant farms) in Meath, some of which belong to Gaelic-speaking people of the poor west country.

Meath, “the middle kingdom,” originally consisted of the present Meath and Westmeath, with parts of Cavan and Longford. The present county came into existence in the 13th century and was defined in the 16th century. In 1172 Henry II bestowed Meath as an earldom to Hugh de Lacy (Meath, Hugh de Lacy, 1st Lord of), who built strong castles at Trim, Ceanannus Mór, and elsewhere and enfeoffed 18 baronies, creating an English territorial nobility that lasted into the 17th century. As the English hold in Ireland deteriorated in the 13th and 14th centuries, only part of Meath remained inside the English Pale (territory) and under direct rule from Dublin. Meath's northern boundary, west of Drogheda, was the scene of the Battle of the Boyne (1690), in which William III defeated James II and asserted English Protestant rule over Ireland. Area 904 square miles (2,342 square km). Pop. (2002) 134,005; (2006)162,831.