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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think anyone was talking about taking food off children's tables?

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

#132
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.

Sounds like you’ve fallen for some farmer rhetoric.. How is growning crops to feed 28 million pigs to 6 million people? We’d have to eat 5 pigs each.. If it was really about food security, we’d surely plant crops to eat ourselves, which is much more efficient in terms of calorie per m^2. Meat has many more negative externalities than plants. Thats the argument for substituting green farming. Of course it’s political.…

Because of animals we grow far more grain than we need, giving us a substantial amount of necessary slack. If there is a wide spread crop failure, the price of grain rises, causing ranchers to sell breeding stock they can no longer afford to feed. Then humans then eat the grain instead of the animals.

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

#133

Southern Europe seems to be converting farmland into solar farms. And new forests seem to be all monoculture Eucalyptus, fast growing for commercial reasons, but sadly empty of wildlife. As much as I'd love for Europe to be reforested, the reduced food security might come back to bite us.

Is there a reason you and some many commenters here are concerned about food security? Has this became a nativist rallying cry of some sort? Because by all fact-based accounts there is no problem with food production in Europe.

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

#134
post #71
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…

> Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a handout.

It's absurd to not acknowledge they are both.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Farmers and people supporting farmers are still a small minority and while they can probably swing some election in some country if they were to massively support only one party or coalition, the money comes for the strategic importance. It would be naive to think it's just "for the votes".

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

#136
post #11

No they won't. If they started tomorrow planting 100,000 trees a day, and never took a single day off, they would finish up in 2052. What kind of nursery can even grow 100,000 saplings of conifer a day? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-climate-deniers-pl...

Using seedballs, you could conceivably plant 1B trees in just a couple months by dropping the seedballs from airplanes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBbU4MQftc8

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

#137
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ins…

> 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?

Not really? It is very protective to maintain an agricultural, energy, and industrial base; not doing so is immensely risky.

Take Germany the first winter after the Ukraine invasion as an example, a mad scramble to fill a huge hole in their energy sector. Imagine the same scenario but with food, or munitions.

You simply cannot rely solely on global supply chains for industries that are critical to survival of a nation. The ability to power, feed, and defend yourself is a primary concern of a nation state and is worth economic inefficiency.

With all that said, I have _no_ idea how Europe and Denmark specifically does subsidies for agriculture. It could be asinine. But philosophically, imo, it is uncontroversially necessary in some form or another. It is far too risky to save a penny on importing wheat from Brazil and risk famines.

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

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmarks agricultural performance is not great at all. it's way too expensive to produce stuff. if it wasn't for EU subsidies the agricultural sector in Denmark would loose over 50% of their profits. To drive the point home the agricultural sector in Denmark only makes up 3.6% of the bnp and 4.3% of exports while taking up 60% of Denmarks total area and employing around 3.9% of the working population. i think Denmark…

> Denmarks agricultural performance is not great at all. it's way too expensive to produce stuff. if it wasn't for EU subsidies the agricultural sector in Denmark would loose over 50% of their profits. Agriculture in the EU is renowned for not being financially unjustified. For decades it's been a finantial no-brainer to import the bulk of agricultural products from south America and Africa. This is not new or the re…

Resistance to a blockade doesn’t require subsidies for growing flowers etc.

Subsidizing exports similarly has very different goals.

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