27/08/2026
Meat 🥩 , dairy 🥛 , eggs 🥚 , and aquaculture combined, takes up 83% of the world’s farmland 🌍. That’s the vast majority of land we use to grow food. But in return, all of that land only gives us 18% of the calories we eat globally, and 37% of our protein.
In other words: the system we’ve built to feed ourselves is deeply inefficient. Most of the world’s farmland is dedicated to animals, while plant-based foods, grown on a fraction of that land, deliver the majority of what actually keeps us fed. It’s not about villainizing farmers or pretending this is simple, but the math is hard to ignore when we talk about feeding a growing population sustainably.
Every plate 🍽️ that leans plant-based is, in a very literal sense, easier on the land. 🌱
Sources:
📎 Poore, J. & Nemecek, T. (2018). “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers.” Science, 360(6392), 987–992.
📎 ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
📎 ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
