Most of the land in this world is used for agriculture, and most of that includes raising livestock for dairy and meat. Livestock are fed on two resources that includes land on which animals graze and the land occupied by feeding crops for the animals.
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By Sayyed Shehzer Abbas
Researchers have found out that if the world shifted to a plant-based diets and stopped relying on livestock, the global land use would be reduced by 75%. The vegetarian diet will help in using less land as raising livestock requires a large space. Eliminating chicken or fish might not help as beef and dairy requires more land.
Need of more agricultural land results in deforestation and biodiversity lost. According to a report, the land requirements of meat and dairy production are equivalent to an area the size of the Americas, spanning all the way from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Plant based food requires less land whereas beef or lamb takes around 100 times as much land to produce a kilocalorie of beef or lamb. If humans are down to move to a healthier and natural diet, reports claims that they could easily reduce their carbon footprint and save the environment for future generations.
Now the question arises if there would be enough food for all the people of the world if they moved to a plant-based diet. Well, since plant-based diets tend to need less cropland, more crops can be grown resulting in the providing food to everyone.
In the hypothetical scenario in which the entire world adopted a vegan diet the researchers estimate that our total agricultural land use would shrink from 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion hectares. A reduction of 75%. That’s equal to an area the size of North America and Brazil combined. Tofu, tempeh, soy milk, etc. can be an excellent dairy and meat substitutes that are easy to grow and can easily reach the human need.