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Tuesday, May 31, 2022

After millennia of agricultural expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’

 


An important item at Our World in Data:

Humans have been reshaping the planet’s land for millennia by clearing wilderness to grow crops and raise livestock. As a result, humans have destroyed one-third of the world’s forests and two-thirds of wild grasslands since the end of the last ice age.

This has come at a huge cost to the planet’s biodiversity. In the last 50,000 years – and as humans settled in regions around the world – wild mammal biomass has declined by 85%.

Expanding agriculture has been the biggest driver of the destruction of the world’s wilderness.

This expansion of agricultural land has now come to an end. After millennia, we have passed the peak, and in recent years global agricultural land use has declined...more at link




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