The world produces 371 million tonnes of meat a year

The world produced a massive 371 million tonnes of meat in 2024, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)¹. That is about 12 tonnes of meat every second. Apart from what is lost or wasted along the way, the meat the world produces is the meat the world eats.

It is more than five times the 70 million tonnes produced in 1961, and more than double the amount in 1988¹. Over the last decade the total grew by about 1.6% a year, and it is still growing.

Twice as much meat per person as in 1961

The rise is not only because there are more people. The population has grown 2.7-fold since 1961³, but meat production has grown more than fivefold, because each person eats more. In 1961 the world had about 23 kilograms of meat available per person. By 2023 that had nearly doubled to 45 kilograms².

Meat eating tends to rise with income, which is why the growth is concentrated where incomes are rising fastest. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and FAO expect emerging economies, above all in Asia, to drive most of the growth over the next decade⁸.

Who eats the most meat

Averages hide enormous differences. In the United States, there are about 122 kilograms of meat available per person each year, well over two kilograms a week. Australia (117 kg), Argentina (115 kg) and Brazil (105 kg) are not far behind. A few Pacific island nations and Mongolia go higher still, with Tonga at 157 kilograms².

At the other end, people in India have about 8 kilograms a year, in Nigeria about 7 and in Bangladesh under 5. In the Democratic Republic of Congo it is 3.5 kilograms, less than the average American eats in two weeks². China sits in between at 74 kilograms, higher than Germany (71 kg), which shows how quickly a country’s diet can change.

These are figures for meat available to eat, before what households throw away, so actual eating is somewhat lower everywhere. The gaps between countries are real, though. If everyone on Earth ate like the average American, the world would need about 2.7 times as much meat as it produces today. That is a rough calculation from the figures above, but it shows why the richest countries’ diets cannot simply be copied worldwide.

Chicken has overtaken pork

Poultry, mostly chicken, is now the world’s most produced meat at 146 million tonnes, about two fifths of the total. Pig meat comes second at 125 million tonnes, then beef and buffalo at 77 million tonnes, and sheep and goat meat at 19 million tonnes. Game, horse and camel meat add a few million more¹.

That order is new. Pig meat was the world’s biggest meat until poultry overtook it in 2016, and poultry pulled clearly ahead in 2019, when pig meat output fell sharply¹. Chicken is the cheapest meat to produce, and the OECD and FAO expect it to supply 45% of all the protein people get from meat by 2034⁸. Because a chicken gives so little meat, that shift means far more animals: the full count is on the page for chickens slaughtered for meat.

Most of the world’s farmland feeds animals

Meat is an expensive way to feed people, measured in land. Around 80% of the world’s agricultural land is used for meat and dairy, either as pasture or to grow animal feed⁴. Only 48% of the world’s cereal harvest is eaten by people directly, while 41% goes to feed animals⁴.

The main reason is that animals turn only a small part of what they eat into meat, so the feed needs far more land than the meat would if people ate the crops directly⁵. Researchers estimate that if the whole world switched to a plant-based diet, the land needed for farming would shrink from about 4.1 billion hectares to 1 billion, freeing up an area roughly the size of Africa⁴. Nobody expects that to happen, but it shows how much of the planet’s surface our meat habits take up.

Water and climate

Meat is also thirsty. Producing a tonne of beef takes about 15,400 cubic metres of water on average worldwide, most of it rain and irrigation water used to grow the feed. For sheep meat it is about 10,400, for pig meat 6,000 and for chicken 4,300. Animal products account for nearly a third of all the water agriculture uses⁵.

For the climate, the numbers are just as lopsided. FAO estimates that livestock farming causes about 6.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, around 12% of everything humans emit⁶. Beef is the heaviest by far: a kilogram of beef from a beef herd comes with around 99 kilograms of greenhouse gases, against about 10 for chicken⁷. Slightly more than half of livestock emissions are methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that cattle, sheep and other grazing animals release as they digest their food⁶.

Where meat consumption is heading

The OECD and FAO expect world meat production to grow by about 13% over the decade to 2034, to roughly 406 million tonnes by their measure. More than half of that growth will be in Asia, and most of it will be poultry⁸.

The picture is not the same everywhere. In some rich countries, meat eating per person has stopped rising, as people become more concerned about animal welfare, the environment and their health⁸. That matters, but it is outweighed by growth elsewhere: a few kilograms less per person in Europe does not balance hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa eating meat more often as their incomes rise.

The more interesting question may be what kind of meat the world eats, rather than how much. The shift from beef toward chicken is already lowering the average climate cost of a kilogram of meat: the OECD and FAO expect livestock emissions to grow by about 6% to 2034, only half as fast as meat output⁸. At the same time, it sharply raises the number of animals killed for each kilogram. Whether plant-based and cultivated alternatives ever take a real share of the market is still an open question. For now they are small next to 371 million tonnes a year, and the line on the chart is still pointing up.

The rest of what the world raises and eats is in the food section.