Description
Industrial animal agriculture is a leading contributor to climate change, land degradation, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. Yet, despite its enormous environmental footprint, the scale of land use devoted to livestock production remains obscured in public understanding and in most policy discussions. Notably, land use decisions, particularly those favoring livestock and feed crop production, have significant climate impacts, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, soil degradation, and the loss of carbon-sequestering ecosystems.
A 2018 national land use map published by Bloomberg powerfully visualized how much land is used to support animal agriculture. The map tells a striking story. When combining land used for cow pasture and land used to grow feed crops for livestock, forty-one percent of all land in the contiguous United States is tied to animal agriculture. The dominant user of American land is clear: cows.
“Hoofprint: State Maps of Animal Agriculture’s Land Use” aims to build on that narrative and deepen its impact by developing state-level land use maps that reveal similarly stark patterns at a finer geographic resolution. These maps will empower state lawmakers, advocates, and communities with localized data to inform land use planning, climate strategy, and agricultural reform. By making visible the scale and impact of animal agriculture within individual states, the project will better connect environmental harms to local experiences and support more targeted, community-driven solutions, advancing YPS’s goals of actionable, place-based climate work.
Learn more about the Law, Environment, and Animals Program at Yale Law School.
