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Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

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Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#121

Post by gklitz »

chipdart wrote: post #105
gklitz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. What I mean is that if we removed the subsidies the farmers wouldn’t farm their land, the market just doesn’t work to support their production. So we are essentially saying “if you pretend to farm your land we’ll make sure you profit” but even at that they of cause need to try to keep the pretend…

> Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. This is a particularly ignorant and clueless opinion to have. The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a strategic asset. Europe's strong economy and huge population density, coupled with cheap access to agricultural produc…

> It would be tempting for farmers to just cash out on real estate if they didn't had an economic upside.

That’s tempting even with subsidies. I have friend who own farming land at the outskirts of the city, they rent it to a farmer at almost net zero to themselves after taxes, but would make a small fortune if they could develop the land. The reason farmers don’t sell their land to real estate and 100x the value instantly isn’t that they don’t want to because of subsidies, it’s that they aren’t allowed to due to zoning laws, and zoning laws are what they are to protect property values, because everyone involved in designing them own at minimum one property. The only political party we have representing renters in any capacity never get any power in the governmental bodies that govern zoning laws.

> The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a strategic asset.

Nothing about that required the current setup. Imagine if we were talking about government subsidies for private militias because we needed to maintain the much more directly important military capacity. Wouldn’t that be crazy? Why is the farming subsidies seen differently. Why must the government pay to private institutions who’s worth had disappeared. If we want governments to maintain farmable land so be it. We don’t have to finically support an artificial elite based them having owned a one profitable asset. Just let it degrade in value and buy it when it hits bottom.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#122

Post by gklitz »

0xy wrote: post #71
gklitz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their land. What I mean is that if we removed the subsidies the farmers wouldn’t farm their land, the market just doesn’t work to support their production. So we are essentially saying “if you pretend to farm your land we’ll make sure you profit” but even at that they of cause need to try to keep the pretend…

Do you think food production has national security implications or do you think "the market" will be happy to sell you food during another global conflict while their own citizens are starving? Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout. Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies. Denmark set aside DKK 53.5 billion for green s…

> Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies.

The green subsidies are also paid out to farmers… it is outrageous. Imagine if we were still paying subsidies to weavers because of their “strategic importance in case of war” and also paying them green subsidies to avoid using the toxic chemicals they would otherwise use doing the thing they are only doing in the first place because it justifies the theater that has the state maintaining their consistent income.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#123

Post by panick21_ »

chipdart wrote: post #102
panick21_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded No, its because far lobbies are an important political block

> No, its because far lobbies are an important political block Wrong. If you try to educate yourself, you will notice that EU's common agricultural policy even went to the extent of paying subsidies to small property owners to preserve their properties as agricultural land. This goes way beyond subsidizing production, or anything remotely related to your conspiracy theory. Just because someone benefits from subsidy p…

They can write all they want. The fact is, the countries wouldn't cant get rid of their farm policies because of voting. And the EU, is an outgrowth of those already existing countries. EU policy is not handed down from a white tower. Of course you can't actually say that.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#124

Post by gklitz »

pvaldes wrote: post #90
0xy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think food production has national security implications or do you think "the market" will be happy to sell you food during another global conflict while their own citizens are starving? Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout. Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green subsidies. Denmark set aside DKK 53.5 billion for green s…

Destroying fisheries goes directly against food security. Fishes are more efficient as source of food by energetic reasons.

I don’t understand why this is being downvoted but this is very true, and it’s the literal case that the fisheries around the entirety of the Bornholm region of Denmark have been completely shut down because the farming industry runoff destroyed it. Had it not been for subsidies the farming industry wouldn’t have done this. We literally paid people to deliberately destroy our environment. Is insane and everyone’s just looking to the sky like “what are we supposed to do? We’ve tried nothing at all even though there has been consistent warnings for two decades and it still happened!?”

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#125

Post by panick21_ »

sshine wrote: post #99
panick21_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded No, its because far lobbies are an important political block

Both can be true. Protecting your agricultural capacity is what convinces the part of the population that does not directly benefit from the subsidies.

That's just admitting that it is just justification.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#126

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

cpursley wrote: post #117
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said that cow emissions weren't significant (well, that it was "absolute lunacy"). Two people have provided rough calculations that show they do have a measurable effect. What's your point?

My point is people should do the math and come to their own reasonable conclusion. Assuming these numbers aren't totally bullshit (see what I did there) this won't move the needle unless we cut out cow consumption 100% and cull all native herd animals. Me? I think we can probably survive some cow farts as our ancestors who hunted buffalo and burnt down entire ecosystems doing so did. We should focus on the real solut…

Knowing they alone account for over 1/20th of the climate change effect though is useful information.

Maybe there are other ways we could reduce their methane emissions short of getting rid of all of them.

I agree that other solutions are needed to properly address climate change though.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#127

Post by eesmith »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #103
eesmith wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Americans learned that the hard way in the 1930s. Grasses, not trees, maintained and protected the soil for what became the US Dust Bowl. The "Great American Desert" was essentially treeless. As your [2] links points out, European agricultural methods "[exposed] the bare, over-plowed farmland. Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away."

> "Like all the others, he had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop. Like all the others, he had abandoned any idea of subsistence farming to think exclusively in terms of a cash crop; and he had gone on thinking in those terms, even when the crop no longer gave him any cash. Then, like all the others, he had g…

> They were warned what would happen.

They also believed in "rain follows the plow."

> windbreaks on farms

Sure, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt .

But that was only one of many techniques developed. https://archive.org/details/bighughfatherofs0000well/page/11... mentions "if subject to wind erosion, it calls for stubble-mulch farming, wind strips and windbreaks." (That's a biography about Hugh Hammond Bennett, who led the Soil Erosion Service ... but not the Shelterbelt!)

In general (a few paragraphs earlier):

'Modern soil conservation is based on sound land use and the treatment of land with those adaptable, practical measures that keep it permanently productive while in use,” he explains. “It means terracing land that needs terracing; and it means contouring, strip cropping, and stubble-mulching the land as needed, along with supporting practices of crop rotations, cover crops, etc., wherever needed. It means gully control, stabilizing water outlets, building farm ponds, locating farm roads and fences on the contour, and planting steep, erodible lands to grass or trees.“'

Earlier at https://archive.org/details/bighughfatherofs0000well/page/96... you can read about the then-novel idea of contouring;

"Tillage is proceeding across the slopes, rather than up and down hill. It is being done on the contour on 15,362 acres. Farmers are finding that it not only serves as a brake on running water but also reduces the cost of mule-power and tractor-power."

Oh, interesting. In 'Predicting and Controlling Wind Erosion', Lyles (1985) writes "Despite the credit the Prairie States Forestry Project has received in ending the Dust Bowl, windbreak plantings under the Project did not begin on a large scale until 1936", and says "the cardinal principle of wind erosion control is maintaining vegetative materials on the soil. ... this practice of conserving or maintaining vegetation on the surface has evolved into various forms of tillage management, which currently go under the generic name of conservation tillage and have become a major technique for erosion control." (See https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3742385.pdf )

This suggests again that trees and windbreaks in general are not the primary solution to the regions affected by the Dust Bowl, but rather grasses, including crops.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#128

Post by thworp »

chipdart wrote: post #106
_w1tm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does having such a large surplus that you’re an exporter of food jive with national security? It sounds like they already produce more than enough. Exposing food production entirely to market forces is, as you point out, a bad idea.

> How does having such a large surplus (...) You should educate yourself. Europe imports around 40% of the agricultural production it consumes. The "surplus" is referenced in economical value and reflects luxury exports such as wine, which is hardly what keeps Europe alive in case of all-out war. The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is food security including an event of all-out war. Your comments s…

Please provide some sources, because I think your 40% is also based on monetary and not nutritional value.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#129

Post by cpursley »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #126
cpursley wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is people should do the math and come to their own reasonable conclusion. Assuming these numbers aren't totally bullshit (see what I did there) this won't move the needle unless we cut out cow consumption 100% and cull all native herd animals. Me? I think we can probably survive some cow farts as our ancestors who hunted buffalo and burnt down entire ecosystems doing so did. We should focus on the real solut…

Knowing they alone account for over 1/20th of the climate change effect though is useful information. Maybe there are other ways we could reduce their methane emissions short of getting rid of all of them. I agree that other solutions are needed to properly address climate change though.

There’s a ton we can do before taking food off our children’s table.

Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest

#130

Post by simonask »

chipdart wrote: post #107
simonask wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark is not even close to jeopardizing its food supply, even less its food security. It produces way more food than is needed to feed its own population.

> Denmark is not even close to jeopardizing its food supply, even less its food security. It produces way more food than is needed to feed its own population. Denmark is a part of the EU. Their agricultural policy follows EU's common agricultural policy. Food security is evaluated accounting for all members, not individual member-states in isolation. In case of a scenario that puts food security at risk, such as an a…

If we are ever in a situation where food security becomes a real issue in the EU - and that’s an almost unfathomably big if - then the first step would be to actually grow food for humans, instead of food for animals that are then exported to China as meat products.

Food security is simply not a relevant concern here.

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