No need to single out meat production. There is so much farming going on that annihilates places like the Amazon. I have seen claims of those crazy huge shipping vessels that pollute more than all cars combined over the course of a year.
What they are farming in all that land is feed for livestock.
So yes, even though they’re growing plants there, those plants are being grown to feed the animals instead of feeding humans directly. Which thanks to trophic levels is a massive waste.
The amount of feed needed to rear one animal to kill for food is not even CLOSE to equivalent to how much we would get if we didn’t add the extra step in of feeding animals and just grew plants for ourselves instead.
The meat industry is a massive contributor to global warming, and we could drastically reduce our effects on climate change if we just stopped eating animals.