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How America Uses Its Land

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Re: How America Uses Its Land

#151

Post by adams_at »

avoutthere wrote: post #138
Shivetya wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better map would be to show how much land is in private hands versus held by Federal and State governments. I bet people would be shocked, see this article from 2016 [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/federal...

I've never understood how the federal government holding all of this land has held up in court. What is the constitutional justification for this?

The Property Clause.

https://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/4/essays/1...

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#152

Post by DennisP »

megaman22 wrote: post #139
vfc1 wrote: post #134

Looking at that map, Between livestock pasture, feed and feed export it accounts for around 45% of the US. Food that we eat is only a small fraction. Isn’t this a huge waste of resources, and completely unsustainable? If we ate the produce directly instead of feeding it to cows and eating them, how many people could we feed? What about the gigantic consumption of water this implies? The link between this to global wa…

You're comparing alfalfa and oranges. You're not going to grow wheat on pastureland that can support sheep or cattle. Much less other vegetables. You're also making the assumption that agricultural land is a resource that needs conservation, when there is a massive surplus of it. We've allowed huge tracts to revert to forest on the east coast.

Allowing more to revert to forest would help moderate CO2 levels. Assuming, that is, we didn't do what we're doing with U.S southeastern forests: converting vast areas into wood pellets, so they can be fed into power plants in Europe.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#153

Post by freddie_mercury »

ianai wrote: post #122
Swizec wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote a smart person I know: “Yeah, sure, you could give up, but then who’s gonna feed the kids?” When your life is hand to mouth, there’s not a lot of room left for suicidal stuff. Too busy surviving. Especially if there’s people depending on you. Even if you’re suicidal, you don’t have the luxury to go through with it. And even if you’re depressed, you don’t have the luxury to give into it. Because if you do, th…

Or, such places handle social interaction better. Birth rates decline in developed areas. My pet hypothesis is that “developed” countries/areas are only developed through extracting so much from workers that only a selected subset may reproduce.

Birth rates decline because of female education. This is such an established fact that your pet theory sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory "the moon landings were faked".

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#154

Post by [deleted] »

vertex-four wrote: post #136
ianai wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re pointing out the mechanism. I’m talking about why people choose to not have children. This is not a disagreement.

The point of your parent comment is that the people in the developing world might also choose not to have children if they had realistic access to birth control - thus making the “why” incorrect. It could just be that having kids isn’t actually worth it.

[deleted]

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#155

Post by ianai »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #153
ianai wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, such places handle social interaction better. Birth rates decline in developed areas. My pet hypothesis is that “developed” countries/areas are only developed through extracting so much from workers that only a selected subset may reproduce.

Birth rates decline because of female education. This is such an established fact that your pet theory sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory "the moon landings were faked".

Right, I forgot about that. But there’s still room to ask why women don’t want children.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#156

Post by [deleted] »

vfc1 wrote: post #134

Looking at that map, Between livestock pasture, feed and feed export it accounts for around 45% of the US. Food that we eat is only a small fraction. Isn’t this a huge waste of resources, and completely unsustainable? If we ate the produce directly instead of feeding it to cows and eating them, how many people could we feed? What about the gigantic consumption of water this implies? The link between this to global wa…

[deleted]

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#158

Post by leetcrew »

knuththetruth wrote: post #96
komali2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why - better being "more natural," right? Those plains have been feeding grazing animals for millennia, what should we do differently?

They were feeding grazing animals, but without all the massive externalities associated with industrial agriculture, from antibiotic resistance to its impact on climate change. If you’re also of an ethical mindset similar to someone like Peter Singer, the “cultivation” of animals for slaughter is not something one should favor.

> impact on climate change

do cows produce significantly more methane than non-domesticated grazing animals, or are there simply many more cows than there were buffalo?

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#159

Post by zip1234 »

redahs wrote: post #59
deepsun wrote: post #54

> According to The Land Report magazine, since 2008 the amount of land owned by the 100 largest private landowners has grown from 28 million acres to 40 million, an area larger than the state of Florida. Wow, it's almost 50% increase in just 10 years.

Inequality in land ownership has been continuously increasing in the United States since the 1930s. Higher property tax rates on land ownership are needed to reverse it, as well as the elimination of property tax exemptions which the owners of non-profits, private forests, golf courses, etc are currently receiving.

Why is it a problem that those people are buying more land? If anything, a single owner that doesn't need the land for economic purposes can protect it much better than a bunch of individual people. My point is that people assume automatically that this is bad and must be stopped. Maybe it is good?

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#160

Post by DennisP »

CPLX wrote: post #39
torpfactory wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a pretty significant diversion of land from a natural state though. Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Think of it like: how many acres have been changed from a natural ecosystem to an artificial one for meat eating.

Why do you think its natural state wasn't grazing before? It's not like we invented grazing animals in a lab. The Great Plains were teeming with millions of buffalo before, and we have cattle on them now. Sure that's different but it's reasonable to note that a lot of this land looks and basically is pretty much the same as it was before modern ranching.

In a natural state, there are predators, and herds stay closely packed for protection. This is great for the land; the grass is only intermittently grazed, and has time to recover and grow deep roots. Natural pasture like this sequesters vast amounts of carbon.

But mostly we kill off the predators. The livestock spreads all over and grazes continuously. The result is topsoil destruction and erosion. There are large areas where overgrazing is a serious problem.

Allan Savory has been the leading advocate for "holistic grazing" that keeps the herds packed. It's been controversial, because he advocates doing more grazing. The evidence of that helping is mixed at best. However, just leaving overgrazed land alone is another matter, and experiments have been very successful.

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