Can plant-based agriculture produce enough food to feed the world?
Summary
Yes. Research consistently shows that shifting to plant-based diets would actually require far less agricultural land than current food systems, potentially reducing global farmland use by about 75%. The current system is inefficient because the majority of cropland is used to grow animal feed rather than food for direct human consumption.
Supported by 1 cited source
Key Points
- 1The study found that animal-sourced foods occupy approximately 83% of global agricultural land but provide only 18% of global calorie supply and 37% of protein supply.
- 2If the world adopted plant-based diets, global agricultural land use could be reduced by approximately 75% — freeing an area roughly equivalent to the combined size of the United States, China, the EU, and Australia.
- 3On average, only about 10-25% of feed calories are converted into edible animal calories.
- 4Growing plants to feed directly to humans is fundamentally more efficient than growing plants, feeding them to animals, and then consuming the animals.
Evidence Summary
The most comprehensive study on this question is the landmark meta-analysis by Poore and Nemecek, published in Science in 2018, which synthesized data from approximately 38,700 farms across 119 countries covering 40 food products.
This dramatic reduction is possible because of the inherent inefficiency of cycling calories through animals. A study by Berners-Lee et al. (2018), published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, found that current global crop production is already sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of a projected 9.7 billion people in 2050 — provided there are significant changes to diets, including replacing most meat and dairy with plant-based alternatives.
Hannah Ritchie, writing for Our World in Data (2021), synthesized multiple studies to show that plant-based diets consistently require less cropland, less total agricultural land, and less freshwater than diets containing animal products.
It is important to note that "feeding the world" is not purely a production problem — it is also a distribution, access, and poverty problem. The world already produces enough calories to feed everyone, yet approximately 735 million people face chronic hunger (FAO, 2023).
Supporting Evidence
Published by FAO researchers in Global Food Security. Challenges the common claim that livestock eat food that could otherwise feed humans. However, this does not negate the land-use efficiency argument.
Caveats: The 86% figure is global — regional variation is significant. Intensive operations (feedlots, poultry, pig farms) use much higher proportions of human-edible grain. The remaining 14% of human-edible feed still represents ~1 billion tonnes globally.
The Bottom Line
A shift to plant-based agriculture would not automatically solve these systemic issues, but by dramatically reducing the resources needed for food production, it would make the challenge substantially easier to address.
Sources & Evidence
1 source cited across 1 claim
86% of livestock feed is not human-edible (FAO)
Modeling