Nowadays, an alternative, and possibly greater, source of economic value might be as a carbon sink.

I'm curious if some of this pasture land might be more heavily forested if it weren't being grazed. Out where my folks live in Colorado, for example, it's striking to see how anything that's anywhere close to flat enough for cattle to walk on is scrubland, but the sides of the mountains are well-forested. I'm no ecologist, but I doubt that's because trees just happen to only grow well on steep terrain.