Why did more Irish farmland become pasture for sheep and cattle after the Great Famine?

Following the Great Famine, the shift toward using more Irish farmland for grazing sheep and cattle was a direct result of significant demographic and structural changes in the country's agricultural sector.

The crisis led to a drastic decline in the number of smallholders and agricultural labourers, particularly in the western and southwestern regions, as millions of people either died or emigrated. This mass depopulation facilitated the clearing of many smallholdings, which allowed for the consolidation of land into fewer hands. As landownership became concentrated, the focus of production shifted away from the subsistence farming that had previously supported the rural poor and toward livestock grazing, which provided animal products for export to the British market.1