Livestock occupies 80% of agricultural land but yields only 20% of global calories. Our diets significantly impact land use, especially with rising affluence, prompting concern for sustainable meat consumption. The 'HALF index' highlights the land needed for global dietary equality. Diverse land requirements across nations reveal a 14-fold difference, compelling a move towards sustainable diets observed in South Asia and Africa. High-income countries require dietary shifts, particularly in reducing beef consumption, as it has the highest land demand per gram of protein. While productivity gains can spare land, population growth and limited livestock productivity balance this.

https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?

Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories (as shown in the visualization). This means that what we eat is more important than how much we eat in determining the amount of land required to produce our food. As we get richer, our diets tend to diversify and per capita meat consumption rises; economic development unfortunately exerts an increasing impact on land resources. If we want per capita meat consumption to be able to rise sustainably at lower incomes, per capita meat consumption at high incomes will have to decrease.