What kinds of forests? For nature, or for lumber? If the latter, what is quality of the timber produced, or will it spark a new wave of power stations burning wood pellets. Lots of questions, with very little detail available in the article.
Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
41–50 of 481 posts
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#42Didn't Bill Gates once say that planting trees has no impact on global warming?
You could plant a trillion trees tomorrow but it won't help anything so long as places like China and India pollute the oceans with millions of tones of plastic waste trash every year. That's in the thousands of tones per day region. The sheer scale of pollution there makes Denmark's measly little contribution just that, peanuts. No wonder the farmers are upset. They're destroying their own industry and people's livelihood and food security, for barely moving the needle on the altar of enviromentalism.
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#43That will be interesting experiment. 1) A growing population require food. 2) Their agricultural sector is a major contributor to their economy, not only farmers but everything around it involves a lot of people and businesses. 3) Many countries rely on Danish agricultural exports (it's massive) to ensure people have food.
(Dane here) - this is a major reversal on the food-security policy that drove not just innovation in intensive farming technologies in Denmark in the late nineteenth century, but also the formation of what is now the EU, post WWII, on a european scale. Let's hope butter and bacon from Poland is going to cover our needs.
Our issues in The Netherlands are probably similar to Denmark's and the biggest issue is not all agriculture. Meat and milk production has an outweighed impact on destroying the environment. You need far more land to grow crops to feed livestock and keeping cows leads to a lot of nitrogen deposition.
We can reduce land use and have food security if people were not so intend on eating/drinking animal products every day (and there are perfectly fine vegetarian alternatives).
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nitrogen emissions from farming are a big topic in the Netherlands. We have a right wing populist governments that wants to raise maximum speeds back to 130km/h but they can't because of nitrogen emissions that caused the previous government (also right leaning, pro car, etc.) to lower the limits. Intense cattle farming is a big environmental challenge in both countries and it comes at a price. Lots of farting cows i…
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I would gently encourage you to engage with the topic rather than a puerile dismissal as “farting cows”. Agriculture is one of the main drivers of climate change (~30%), and and also has associated land usage implications. Ruminants (“farting cows”) directly produce around 6% of our total emissions.
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#45Before I go into rage mode, I suppose I should ask, why Farmland? Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it. I am not against planting trees but it on top of farm land doesn't make any sense to me.
the Netherlands exports so much food (and meat...) that it becomes a burden on local wildlife and milieu, mostly due to nitrogen emissions, pesticides and fertilizer.
I think it's the same for Denmark, though the mostly hold pigs in stead of cattle.
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The parent did not say anything about climate and pointed to actual the problem in The Netherlands: nitrogen deposition. Our nature parks are dying because there is far too much nitrogen deposition from nearby farms. (But our current right-wing populist government likes to pretend the problem does not exist, so they have to be slapped on the wrists by courts and the EU.)
Now that’s a real problem, farm animal excrement is an issue. Seems like one that technology can solve?
That's what the industry has been saying here for decades and they tried a lot of things, but the problem has only gotten worse. At some point you have to say - apparently you can't fix it, so we have to buy out farmers near nature reserves.
But the farmers have been intimidating politicians by blocking highways and inner cities with tractors and other equipment. Funnily, if anyone else does this they get arrested, but farmers get a carte blanche to disrupt society.
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#47Before I go into rage mode, I suppose I should ask, why Farmland? Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it. I am not against planting trees but it on top of farm land doesn't make any sense to me.
Just having farmland be fields is not very good for the land or the eco system. Breaking up farmland with hedges, woods, wetlands or whatever nature decides it should be is often a good idea. Next best thing is to manually plant trees. Edit: add planting trees
> Breaking up farmland
One thing I have wondered was the relative benefits of a concentrated wilderness versus distributed habitat.
The common agricultural policy set-aside distributes payments for the wilderness across many farms (for equity, one supposes), whereas a concentrated wilderness would benefit few (and probably only the landowners).
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#48That will be interesting experiment. 1) A growing population require food. 2) Their agricultural sector is a major contributor to their economy, not only farmers but everything around it involves a lot of people and businesses. 3) Many countries rely on Danish agricultural exports (it's massive) to ensure people have food.
(Dane here) - this is a major reversal on the food-security policy that drove not just innovation in intensive farming technologies in Denmark in the late nineteenth century, but also the formation of what is now the EU, post WWII, on a european scale. Let's hope butter and bacon from Poland is going to cover our needs.
> Let's hope butter and bacon from Poland is going to cover our needs.
Pole here - Poland switched form being a pork exporter to an importer over the course of the last few decades.
Top external suppliers are...
Denmark (53kt)
Belgium (50kt)
Germany (44kt)
The Netherlands (24.5kt)
Spain (24.5kt)
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Places that used to be forested and are not productive farmland. There’s lots of places like this, just maybe not in Denmark.
Not really. Trees plant themselves. If it’s not being actively used for something/mowed it’ll turn back into forest.
(In the absence of grass and small tree devouring animals)
Re: Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
#50Southern 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.