Due to increasing demand for meat, we have people burning the forest and releasing all the carbon sequestered in the trees, and reducing the efficiency of the land as a carbon sink going forward.
The majority of the worlds meat is raised in areas where forests do not naturally develop.
If all natural meat consumption stopped tomorrow, Brazilians would cut down forests to grow whatever is needed for fake meat. The problem is land is one of the few economically exploitable natural resources the country has to sustain itself.
Australian beef is some of the highest quality in the world, and it's almost solely raised in areas that have very low impact on the environment. (Dairy farming is different, of course, because the location of dairy farms is important to have a close proximity to the dairies and thus the consumers).
But unfortunately a lot of people view the US agriculture system as the be-all and end-all, and don't look to the rest of the world that can actually perform fairly low-impact agriculture.
The Australian system is using the land in that way because the land isn't good for much else. If Australia wasn't largely arid or desert then I suspect we'd have a far higher population and much intensive land use.
You seem to have missed the important part of my comment.
If you tell an Iowa corn farmer than he can't grow corn anymore, he doesn't just give up and let his land turn in to prairie. He will grow soy, or raise pigs, or whatever else monetizes the land.
Brazilians will keep cutting down forests because they depend on the land for income. They ultimately don't care what the deforestation is for, only that it feeds their family.
Why would Brazilians cut down more forest if the demand for crops goes down (since a lot of the crops are currently fed to livestock)?
I don't know what they'll do with the areas already cleared but there wouldn't be an economic incentive to cut down more forest.
This study about soy in the US and Brazil that was posted a few weeks ago is quite interesting about the link between deforestation, soy and livestock (https://ourworldindata.org/soy)
The trade off is not pasture to forest. Pastureland for most of the world is on arid land too dry to support forests, such as the American West. Before we raised cattle on it, it was tall grassland where Bison grazed. Similarly most forms of cattle culture arose in arid climates that could not support water intensive agriculture such as rice. Forests don't do well in arid climates, as California is finding out after decades of mismanagement.
I live in NZ where which still somewhat recently used to be covered in forests. There’s tons of pastures and forests certainly look nice (and native bush is just something else), but other than that I don’t know why forests so important? Properties with shading are more expensive here, but that also causes more issues with your rain water tanks.
I live in NZ as well - forests provide a myriad of benefits, the ones you'd probably consider most importation is the sequestering of co2 and the production of oxygen (that thing you need to live). Beyond that they are a habitat in which much wildlife finds a more suitable environment (forested areas are protected from birds of prey), act as wind breaks across areas such as the Canterbury plains, help with retaining topsoil and so much more.
The shade they provide your BBQ is literally the least important role forests play.
The o2 production that forests and rainforests provide always seems a bit overstated - your surrounding oceans are even better at that, but algae don't help with regional smog much, do they?
Carbon sequestering, wind breaks, increased biodiversity, topsoil protection, game reserves - they may not seem huge to the average person, but like you say they are crucial for our continuity.
Due to increasing demand for meat, we have people burning the forest and releasing all the carbon sequestered in the trees, and reducing the efficiency of the land as a carbon sink going forward.