"If the current rate of bringing land into development and conserving land as wild, as has been practiced over the last 20 years, were projected forward the two lines would never intersect, meaning development will always out pace conservation until 100% of the landmass is consumed."
In the thirty years between 1950 and 1981 the grain harvested area globally increased from 587 million hectares to 732 million hectares. Since then, however, the grain area has shrunk to 690 million hectares with a rising population that is increasingly better fed.
The main reason is increasing yields per hectare, or the productivity of the land (due to motorisation, high yield grains and the original 'Green Revolution').
In the United States forestland is growing 588,600 hectares on average every year, adding to the one-third of the US already covered by forests, or just over 300 million hectares. In the European Union forests are growing 486 million cubic metres every year.
All over the world the land dedicated to national parks is expanding, not contracting. The European Union pays farmers to set aside agricultural land, and even to return it to wilderness. Huge national parks have been created in Gabon, and smaller ones all across northern England and the Everglades. Land is being retired from agricultural production all across the developed world, and will be in China and India, too. After all, isn't that the sub-text of the damming programme in the Narmada Valley, the Three Gorges and Turkey.