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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

#401

Post by seunosewa »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #356
shiroiushi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output. This assumes that the land is equally usable for both activities. Many times, it isn't: a lot of land that's good enough for grazing cows doesn't have enough water available for growing plants that people want to (or can) eat. People can't eat grass. This probably isn't an issue in Denmark,…

Cows are extremely inefficient (2% conversion) at converting calories to meat, so putting cows on that land is also an inefficient use of that land. And land with bad yield for crops also has bad yield for cows and the grass they eat and the water they need. I don't see the proposition being made in these claims. Cows are so inefficient that we don't need to use marginal land at all to grow food. The majority of arab…

Dairy cows convert calories to milk at over 24% efficiency. And you still get the meat.

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

#402

Post by fifticon »

brodouevencode wrote: post #391
fifticon wrote: post #282

another point is: since WW2, denmark has one of the highest, if not THE highest, percentages of area under agriculture. During WW2, we temporarily allowed agriculture on very poor farmland. It was meant to cease after the war, but our strong farmer lobbyists kept extending the permission.. So it is not about giving up 'good farm land', it is about stopping abusive agriculture which is only possible with extreme chemi…

What percentage of output is accounted for in the lower tier (not good) farmland? If the land is truly suboptimal the additional costs will not scale with the reduction of output.

I'm sorry I'm not directly answring your question. But part of the answer is, that we are not really intending to fix the CO2 issue. A/the major point with the initiative is that we have effectively killed marine/water life in our local rivers, lakes and near coastal areas, primarily by the leakage of fertilizer from low-yield farming areas (algae remove oxygen from our water, having thus killed off marine life). Because of this, we are no longer discussing the economics of it - once you kill off all marine life, the price is 'always' too high (the way we see it..) So, it might help or not help CO2, but our immediate concern is making it possible to have life in our local water bodies, and more oxygen than 0%. I'm describing it a bit crude, but this should paint the general picture. If we run out of food and starve, we can return to killing allmarine life again :-)

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

#403

Post by [deleted] »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #399
JacobJeppesen wrote: post #162

I've seen a bit of confusion regarding this. First, it's 10% of Denmark's total land area, which is roughly equivalent to 15% of farmland area. Second, the conversion of farmland area into nature and forests is mainly for improving water quality, as excess nitrogen from agriculture has essentially killed the rivers and coastal waters through oxygen depletion from algae. Regarding global warming and CO2, the area conv…

"They're in Danish, but upload them to Claude or ChatGPT, and you'll have a much better source" Eh, people don't know that Google Translate can translate documents (PDF, Doc etc.) as well?!

[deleted]

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

#404

Post by woodpanel »

Even though climate-wise, the need for trees is overrated IMO – recently the list of benefits that forests provide has been extended:

- More forests protect a country against sudden supply chain crises. It's is just a small protection (and only for the commodity wood) but still

- Forests are the first line of defense in drone warfare as we've seen in the War in Ukraine, where maneuvers are often concentrating on, and gains are counted in, Tree-Lines.

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

#406

Post by insane_dreamer »

addcommitpush wrote: post #390
insane_dreamer wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are not going to like things that make them stop eating meats, whether it's governement buying out producers, a carbon tax, a carbon quota, whatever. I think the point of the book is that when the consequences are serious enough, it pushes significant social and behavioral change that people would not consider or accept otherwise. It's hard for us to imagine how society could actually change so drastically,…

Sure, but then the story is about 1. the Indian heatwave and 2. the transformation; whether the transformation came about through carbon coins or carbon quotas or whatever is a detail. But it's the focus of the book.

Right; that was my takeaway.

the eco-terrorism was an interesting aspect that I hadn't thought of before, but actually seems quite plausible

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

#407

Post by variadix »

Spivak wrote: post #388
danlitt wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how this responds to the comment you are actually responding to. You say, > Governments pay to keep food cheap > A carbon tax will either drive up prices or [drive up prices] So, this is just number rearranging. The public pays either way. Ok. The comment you replied to says > Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions. So t…

We should simply ignore the externality all together because we're all paying for it anyway. Either the subsidies take into account the carbon tax or they don't. If they do then it's number rearranging. Government gives dollars and then immediately takes some of them back, it's a convoluted appropriations bill. If they don't then food prices go up which is contrary to the government's goal of keeping food cheap at th…

It’s not exactly number rearranging, even if the government increases subsidy payments to offset the cost. E.g. say gasoline costs twice as much per gallon due to a carbon tax, but subsidies are increased proportionally to offset the cost increase so that food prices remain constant. This still creates an incentive for farmers to use “cleaner” forms of energy as the ones that do will increase their profit margins. Ultimately the increased subsidy is a burden on the tax payer, but in a more narrow sense carbon producing farms would be subsidizing some of the costs for farms that produce less carbon.

Whether this plays out as intended remains to be seen. I think externalities need to be priced in somehow, the issue is determining the appropriate cost. If you want the market to decide the cost efficiently there needs to be some mechanism to tie the two measures together (increased environmental quality => lower carbon tax rate). I agree however that manipulating the economics of food production is dangerous and needs to be done slowly and carefully.

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

#409

Post by chgs »

pjc50 wrote: post #314
chgs wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the U.K. farmland has a rental value of about £100 an acre but a purchase price over £10k an acre. The value in the land isn’t in its use (which is getting 1% ROI), but in speculation it may be granted permission to be converted to housing, or because of tax loopholes.

Yes, this came up in the recently closed inheritance tax loophole; people were buying "family farms" purely to leave to their children while doing the minimum of farming.

Yes speculation and tax avoidance. Neither of which are behaviours we want to encourage.

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

#410

Post by jillyboel »

ksec wrote: post #16

Before 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.

Because the EU wants its member countries to care about the climate, even though it's completely overshadowed by the US and China not giving a shit
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