After Millennia of Agricultural Expansion, the World Has Passed 'Peak Agricultural Land'

The world produces more food than ever, but the amount of land we use is now falling. From a report: Agricultural land is the total of arable land that is used to grow crops, and pasture used to raise livestock. Measuring exactly how much land we use for agriculture is difficult. If all farms were simply rows of densely-planted crops it would be straightforward to calculate how much land is being used. Just draw a square around the field and calculate its area. But across much of the world, this is not how farming looks: it's often low-density; mixed in with rural villages; in tiny smallholdings that are somewhere between a garden and a farm. Where farmland starts and ends is not always clear-cut. As a result, there are a range of estimates for how much land is used for agriculture. Here I have brought together the three leading analyses on the change in global land use. Each uses a different methodology, as explained in the chart (in the linked post). The UN FAO produces the bedrock data for each of these analyses from 1961 onwards; however, the researchers apply their own methodologies on top, and extend this series further back in time. As you can see, they disagree on how much land is used for agriculture, and the time at which land use peaked. But they do all agree that we have passed the peak. This marks a historic moment in humanity's relationship to the planet; a crucial step in its protection of the world's ecosystems. It shows that the future of food production does not need to follow the destructive path that it did in the past. If we continue on this path we will be able to restore space for the planet's wilderness and wildlife.

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