This trend looks good:
Unfortunately, the global population has more than doubled over the last 50 years, so the total amount of land devoted to agriculture has yet to decline:
Meanwhile, we’ll in the middle of a mass extinction, with the loss of wild habitat to agriculture largely to blame. And almost 80% of agricultural land is used for livestock and feed crop cultivation.
Cattle are the main culprit - or rather, the people who eat beef. Yet the global appetite for beef keeps going up…
“U.S., Global Meat Demand Beefs Up as Cattle Industry Works to Keep Beef at Center of the Plate” - Farm Journal, Inc., August 12, 2021
Banner Year for U.S. Beef Exports in 2021 - International Agricultural Trade Report, July 15, 2021
The growing demand for beef is coming mostly from Asia and Africa and no matter how impassioned the pleas from environmentalists and vegans, the people in those regions aren’t going to change their food preferences any time soon - not when memories and stories of widespread hunger still linger in their collective minds.
But demand is only half the equation. Perhaps there’s a solution on the supply side. That is, perhaps there’s a way to manage more cattle with less collateral damage.
Next: Location matters: the best places to graze.
—
References:
Hannah Ritchie (2019) Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Last updated on April 30, 2020 https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2019) - "Land Use". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use [Online Resource]