TOEFL: It is more important to use available land for farmland, housing, and industry.

Dear EssayForum experts, could you please review one of my essays and give comments on it. I would also appreciate your advises how could I improve my writing skills in the nearest 2 weeks as I have toefl exam on August 16.

Question:
Some people think that human needs for farmland, housing and industry are more important than saving land for endangered animals. Do you agree or disagree with this point of view? Why or why not ? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Some ideas which I managed to outline in 5 minutes interval before actual writing:
agree, farmland is important:
+ number of people is increasing and they have to find new sourses for the living; farmland/housing/industry allow to increase living level of people

- the common land area is limited and we should set priorities;
disagree, endangered animals is important:
+ we should maintain the variability for the next generation; if we loose some animals then biological chain can be broken;
- some of endangered animals do not provide any benefit to people

Actual Essay (what I managed to write in remaining 25 minutes); I've emphasized with bold style the errors which I had found myself after the review of the essay:

I agree with the point of view that available land should be used for such economic activities of humankind as farmlanding, housing, and industrial development. I think that usage of the land by a man is more important than keeping it untouched for endangered animals for the following two reasons.

First, the population of the Earth has been increasing steadily, and people need new sourses for their living. Only 20 years ago the number of people on the Earth equaled 6 billion and now it is more than 7 billion. And as the number of people increases, the demand for food, dwellings, and manufactured products increases as well. The only opportunity to satisfy the increasing demand is to start to exploit new lands for growing crops or building houses. Unfortunetely, we have to take as given the fact that area of the land, which is available for agracultural or industrial usage, is finite, and even though some of countries, such as Rissia and China, have more land resourses, common available land will not change drastically in the nearest ages. That is why we have to set priorities in land usage, and maintainance of demand of humankind is the most important issue, in my opinion.

Second, usage of new lands for farmlanding and housing helps to increase living standards of people, because it allows to feed more people and give homes to more people. And how could we think about endangered animals at the moment when we have 10-15% of the earth population unfeed?

That is why I think it is more important to use available land for farmland, housimg, and industry.

About 270 characters.

Well, we are not great experts, however, with our experience for all these years we can certainly help you improve your TOEFL writing :)
I think you need to change your approach for answering this task. You have the right set of paragraphs here (Intro, body paras and the conclusion), but you need to change the approach of writing those paras. Follow this;

Introduction - Begin you essay with an interesting hook that can capture the readers attention.It should be interesting, meaningful and relevant idea to your topic. Then introduce the background of the issue to the reader. This is the most important part of your intro and you can do this by paraphrasing your prompt. Then state your opinion very clearly.

Body para 1 - Tell the first reason to justify why you hold that opinion. Then give a specific example to support your reason.
Body para 2 - Second reason and the example
Conclusion- Sum up what you said above and reinstate your opinion.