> "Japan does well with little land. Agriculture nowadays uses way less land than it used to."

Surely you are joking. Japan is not self-sufficient with respect to food; they have to import around 63% currently and it is of great concern to them, see https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/20/editorials/j... .

If the whole world used Japanese farming techniques, we could easily cut land use in half. It's quite possible to use far less land, it's just not a priority to most people to pay more for food.