If a cattle farm isn't built in Manhattan, a thousand other people will be lining up to turn it into office, residential, or retail space.

If a cattle farm isn't built in Erath County Texas, that land is going to sit there doing nothing. It has no other productive use case.

The point of this is that pointing out how much land beef production uses isn't as insightful as it may at first seem, because that land isn't being taken from another economic activity.