Sometimes you might think that everyone in the world is already a vegetarian. At least when it comes to what people tell you in everyday life, but joking aside. The people of AsapSCIENCE explains to us in the usual vivid manner what would actually happen if every single person on earth suddenly started eating a vegetarian diet and what impact this would have on our environment, economy and health. Very interesting.
In a world without any meat eating humans to provide a market, whole herds of domestic animals would disappear and this would free up vast quantities of land. About 33 million square kilometers of land are used for pasture, an area about the size of Africa and that's not even counting the land used to grow crops exclusively for animal feed. Some of it would be needed for the increased amount of vegetable crops, but much of the land currently used as pasture is actually too dry to grow crops. Without humans adding artificial nutrients this land could turn to desert but if properly managed it's possible that some farmland would return to its natural state of grassland or forest, which could help counteract global climate change. After all the loss of co2 absorbing trees cleared for agriculture is a major reason why global levels of co2 or going up.