[sprocket]

I imagine that a lot of the Australian farms are going to be in the outback, where the quality of the land and feed for the cattle is marginal, and you have to farm extensively (ie. range cows on large tracts of land). They are not going to be irrigating and fertilizing millions of acres, so the feed is going to be relatively poor as compared to lush, green farmland you might be familiar with.

[jaimie]

Exactly. There is huge variability in how many cows can be supported by the land. For a deep dive, check out: https://www.farmbrite.com/post/how-many-cows-can-i-keep-per-...

[myshpa]

> where the quality of the land and feed for the cattle is marginal

Might be because they deforested those lands and have been grazing those cows there for god knows how long now.

EDIT:

It seems I somehow managed to overlook we're talking about the outback, not the eastern Australia.

https://wwf.org.au/news/2021/australia-remains-the-only-deve...

AUSTRALIA REMAINS THE ONLY DEVELOPED NATION ON THE LIST OF GLOBAL DEFORESTATION FRONTS

In the 13 years from 2004 to 2017, an area of forest six times the size of Tasmania, more than 43 million hectares, was lost in the 24 deforestation fronts.

The report says “cattle ranching” (the destruction of trees to create pasture for cattle) was “by far the most significant driver” of forest loss or degradation in eastern Australia.

[FireBeyond]

Contemporary Australia certainly may not have improved things, but most of those lands are and have been arid desert for millennia (in many of them, the only evidence of forestation has been pre Ice Age. It's generally just scrub).