You can see this very clearly flying almost anywhere. It's most obvious in places like the Midwest US, but even between cities in more densely populated regions, there's so much farmland. Islands of concrete in oceans of ordered crop fields.
this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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I mean growing food is pretty damn important. Obviously we could be way more efficient about it though.
Yes, when 80% of agriculture goes to feeding the food (animals) we choose to eat, which is a terrible idea but it’s so yummy, and most humans are only slightly smarter than farm animals anyway so can you blame us?
Weird to include textile farming with meats. Sure wool is a textile, but so is cotton, flax, wood fibre, jute, hemp etc.
It would have made more sense to divide agriculture into food agriculture and non-food agriculture. And then go into calorie supply.
i think the reason for that might be that some native communities actually use the same animal for multiple products, i.e. using sheep for their wool but also for their meat.
This chart also shows how terribly inefficient animal farming is.
Most pasture land isn't suitable as farmland - there's examples of overlap of course, but you really can't draw that conclusion from the chart, it leaves out far too much information.
Okay, but can we stop using suitable farmland to grow corn cattle feed?
I'm wholly in support of this plan.
Yep for sure. The food grown to feed livestock (6M2 km) seems like it’s just feeding humans with extra steps. If you cut that out and feed humans directly. You’d still have livestock on grazing pad (32M2 km), just not the whole feedlot situation.
Yeah, and those extra steps require more land and more water and more transportation and more harvesting and more processing etc etc. Every extra step makes the whole system less efficient. We're essentially sacrificing farmland.
Most of the corn cattle are eating is the stalk and husks. The stuff we're going to grow regardless and would otherwise throw away.
Near slaughter when they get fattened up on feed lots (called finishing) it's mostly cracked corn grain, it's more towards the beggining of life that they're fed roughage with only a small amount of supporting grain.
This is true. But at the same time, the tradeoff I think more about isn't pasture versus crop land, but pasture and crop land versus wild land. Personally, I really enjoy eating meat, and have no problem with its production in general. But I also think that we should reserve far more land for nature.
Imo, a good way to strike the balance is via pigouvian taxes. First, of course, a carbon tax. Animal agriculture creates a lot of carbon, so higher prices would drive consumers to lower-carbon alternatives. Then a land value tax - the trick would be deciding how much the intrinsic beauty of nature and access to it by the public is worth - but once we figure out a decent number, the scheme should work quite well. If you want to farm/ranch, you aren't allowed to use up everyone else's nature for free. Either generate enough money to pay the public back for using their nature, or bounce. And of course, better rules and oversight for animal welfare - I wanna eat meat, not meat produced with unnecessary suffering.
This combination of approaches would reduce meat consumption and land use in a fair and ethical way, while still not being overbearing or playing favorites by doing things like banning x or y. Unfortunately, this is very much a pipe dream - at least in the US right now, as we have, umm... more pressing issues.
No, it doesn't.
The entire mid- and western US is largely unable to grow crops - "this land was made for the buffalo, and hates the plow".
See Bowl, Dust.
To make it grow crops, we've been pumping out a massive aquifer since the early 20th century. Subsidence caused by this is a major concern, in addition to the aquifer not refilling as fast as we use it.
In the western portions of CO, basically all of Wyoming, NM, Arizona (arid places), crops simply can't grow at any significant level - but that land can grow crops for grazing animals, especially cows. Sheep and goats destroy such grazing land, which explains the conflict between cattlemen and sheepherders in the 19th century.
Really the entire breadbasket is naturally suited to cows, not crops, as it supported millions of bison.
You should probably read more before pontificating.
Yes, but you omitted all the croplands we use for feeding non-human animals.
Poore and Nemecek estimate that 50% of croplands are used for human food, 38% is for livestock feed and 12% is for non-food uses.
https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
Also, if our goal is to find the truth in all of this, why be mean?
They didn't really omit that as an oversight, it's just not relevant to their thesis - agricultural land used for animal feed is not super relevant to the disparity in land utilization, as 80% of all agricultural land usage is pasture/grazing. Only 7% of agricultural land is used for growing animal feed.
Agreed about being a little mean though, although I do sympathize with being frustrated about this as AG land use is a very often misunderstood statistic.
You raise some valid points, but I don’t see why it’s necessary to be so rude about it.
This is true, but personally, I vote that instead of cows we reintroduce the buffalo. Let the herds roam free across the land. Allow people to hunt the buffalo for food if they want - but you must use a bow or blackpowder rifle, and can only mount a horse or a bicycle.
A death from arrow wounds is absolutely agonizing, especially for a creature as large as a buffalo - it's awful that we still allow it. But black powder is much more humane (relatively), and many states have black powder seasons - including several for buffalo. Though if we're allowing black powder, we really should just let people use proper hunting rounds to minimize the suffering of the animal.
Black powder isn't as humane a round if something goes wrong. Way better to hunt with a semi-auto, just in case you need a quick follow up shot.
Beefalo
I'd hazard a guess that is the point of the graphics considering the special markings highlighting the fact.
Animal food use should be pulled back a lot. But let's also concentrate on how much of agriculture area is used for non-food.
If you want to have a more visual perspective, you can check this brazilian project that tracks land cover in Brazil:
https://plataforma.brasil.mapbiomas.org/coverage/coverage_lclu
All in yellow is pasture, and in pink, cropland. The site also allows to see change over the years
And of that, 70% is used to host or feed animals. The waste is insane.
The big takeaway for me is that maybe we should cut down on animal protein and have more plant protein in our diets.
We feed livestock almost as much plant food as we do ourselves (6m2 km vs 8m2 km). Not to mention the space taken up for grazing uses most of our agricultural land.
I'd argue that many of the forests account as "area that is used by humans" too. At least when they are reguarly cut down for wood.