You are trying to tell me that growing food for animals to eat, and then eating the animals, somehow takes less arable land than directly growing foods for humans to eat?
And yet it's true. 2/3rds of pasture is not suitable for agriculture and would be worthless without ruminants. The corn-fed cattle industry in the US is a result of energy being cheap and labor being expensive. Less than 20% of beef is farmed that way.