Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

by Hannah Ritchie

how much land we would need to support our current population of 8 billion people using different foraging and farming regimes. Remember: the amount of habitable land on Earth – that’s all our ice- and desert-free land – is around 100 million km2, and we currently use half of it – 50 million km2 – for farming. To support 8 billion through hunting and foraging we would need 8,000 to 800,000 million km2 of viable land. That’s 100 to 10,000 times the amount of land we have on Earth. That’s also ignoring the inconvenient reality that we’d wipe out all mammals along the way. What about pastoralism? Small communities that rely on livestock? That is not much better than the most productive foraging societies. We’d need around 3,000 to 8,000 million km2. Or 10 Earths. How about a return to early, organic methods of farming? Could we all have our own little plot of land, roll up our sleeves and get back to how farming used to be? For shifting agriculture – the slash-and-burn style – we’d need between 80 and 800 million km2. Getting closer, but we still don’t have nearly enough land to live like that. For more traditional farming in one place we’d need between 8 and 80 million km2 which – at least towards the lower end – is much more realistic. But this would only work if everyone ate a plant-based diet so we could feed them efficiently on croplands. And we’d probably have to cut down many of our forests along the way. With modern farming we could feed 8 billion people on much less ...