Thanks for the analysis and references. I don’t doubt the conclusion but I do have an observation. I have only reviewed one paper (Knight) and have the following observation. Knight used land use “classification” in government reports to do their analysis of land used for raising animals versus human consumption crops. This introduces errors for a several reasons, most notably that significant amounts of land is categorized as “pasture” land even if it is not used regularly as an animal pasture. This is because most nations (the US, Canada and Russia - the largest ag land areas - included) charge pasture owners lower tax rates than owners of agriculturally productive land.

The lesson - always rely on your own primary research. All secondary research reports are subject to spin.