Food / A wider perspective
A different plate.
A smaller land footprint.
Food choices connect everyday meals with the land used to produce them. Understand the evidence without turning a global estimate into a personal promise.
Updated 28 September 2026
The essentials
The research
A 2018 analysis by Poore and Nemecek, published in Science, examined food production across many countries. Oxford’s summary reported that a global diet without meat and dairy could use more than 75% less farmland.
The boundary
This is a modelled global scenario, not a forecast that changing one meal immediately restores a measured area of forest. Land use also differs across producers and locations.
The next question
Reducing agricultural land demand creates possibilities. What happens to land afterwards depends on policy, protection and local decisions; nature does not automatically recover.
Read the number in context
The headline concerns agricultural land, including pasture. It does not mean that three-quarters of all land on Earth would be freed. A global scenario also says little about the precise footprint of your next lunch. Keep the system-level finding separate from a claim about one individual.
Try one meal you would make again
Our practical suggestion: choose a familiar dish and build a plant-based version you enjoy. Try lentil tomato sauce, a chickpea curry or a bean filling for wraps. Taste, affordability and repeatability matter when turning an intention into an everyday habit.
Make the change useful to you
Start with a meal you already cook, write down the ingredients and try it once. Decide what you would change before buying a whole new pantry. For a fully vegan diet, use the nutrition guide below to plan nutrients as well as recipes.