The False Benefit of Less Land Use for Agriculture

Earlier this year, Our World in Data celebrated the fact we have now passed “peak agricultural land”: Over the last few decades, the global land area devoted to food production has declined. While the decline is not large and while the data is uncertain, the fact itself is significant and not in dispute: Until recently, agricultural land use rose exponentially to feed the world’s growing population. Kristoffer Hansen in the following blog about the economics of land use, malinvestments in modern agriculture, and the benefits of land use.