Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 481 posts

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

#431

Post by motohagiography »

shakna wrote: post #235
motohagiography wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not OP, but how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation? the effect of taxing farmers as though they were some kind of vanity industry will be similar to what nationalizing farms has done in prior schemes like this. it creates a national dependency on imported food from countries that do not bankrupt their farmers, and suddenly (shocked!) the entire Danish food supply crosses the borders t…

What technological innovation do you think farming could adopt, that it hasn't already...? They don't operate with simple machinery. They regularly use some of the most complicated systems that mankind can build, such as satellite systems, chemical analyses, etc. Governance is needed, where progress does not occur naturally.

invent, not adopt. that's the difference between government and industry, government doesn't invent anything except problems to manage.

reality is, governments want smallholding farmers out of the business and to replace them with agribusinesses because it's a process of de-kulakizing their subjects. it has nothing to do with science or environment at all. I think maybe a war over this stuff will give us the reset we need.

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

#432

Post by actionfromafar »

chgs wrote: post #411
celestialcheese wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For farmers today, the choice is more stark. I can only speak to small and medium farms, but if we're talking large horsepower cultivators / row farming, It's really a choice between keep my old pre-emissions diesel/buy a pre-2006 used tractor from auctions/marketplace for 50k, or double down and lease a 250k-400k new mid-size tractor. You make it seem like many farmers have choices, but old "dirty" tractors are the…

So they externalise their costs and get other people to pay?

Yes. Like you do when you then buy their produce.

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

#433

Post by RayVR »

braincat31415 wrote: post #415
RayVR wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Denmark, inflation is currently running at a 1.6% annualized rate, as of the most recent reading[0]. This is the full basket inflation rate, including volatile categories (food and energy). Core inflation is even lower, with the latest reading at 1.3% (annualized) in October 2024. Food inflation is, of course, volatile. It currently sits at a moderately elevated level of 3.9% (October 2024, annualized). Food price…

1.6% is the change in the CPI. The actual inflation is about 8%. There was a huge change in the CPI in 2022 or 2023, mostly attributed to sharply higher cost of energy.

I don't think you understand the numbers I listed. Read what I wrote again and try to think about the parts you don't understand, look them up, then read again.

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

#434

Post by RayVR »

lowkey wrote: post #362
RayVR wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Denmark, inflation is currently running at a 1.6% annualized rate, as of the most recent reading[0]. This is the full basket inflation rate, including volatile categories (food and energy). Core inflation is even lower, with the latest reading at 1.3% (annualized) in October 2024. Food inflation is, of course, volatile. It currently sits at a moderately elevated level of 3.9% (October 2024, annualized). Food price…

Economists look at inflation on a month/month or year/year basis. This is not an accident as it purposely ignores the destructive cumulative effect of inflation. Individuals, by contrast look at the cumulative effect of inflation. If inflation runs hot for several years and then comes back to a moderate level, prices don’t go down regardless of what economists would have you believe. The effect of inflation has memor…

Economists look at inflation in many, many ways. I don't think anyone that's reasonably well informed, especially economists, misunderstands the cumulative impact of price changes.

Economists that make monetary policy decisions look at recent inflation trends + projected inflation because they are tasked with price stability, which requires them to often respond to shocks well outside their control (war in Ukraine, massive government spending, tax cuts, covid-19 pandemic, etc.)

I was trading and researching fixed income and inflation markets (and implementing in multi-billion dollar portfolios) years ago when you had inflationistas claiming the Fed was going to cause double digit runaway inflation. At the same time, you had people claiming the Fed was not doing enough to support markets.

No matter what monetary policy makers do, it will be pretty much universally mocked by pundits and especially anyone that wants to talk their own book.

Academic economists don't really focus much on any particular reading of inflation, unless perhaps they have their own axe to grind about how it is measured or responded to.

Monetary policy can't change the past, which is why they evaluate current and expected inflation, not what happened in two years ago. Just because prices increased dramatically in 2022 does not mean the Fed or any other central bank should aim for deflation.

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

#435

Post by panick21_ »

asdff wrote: post #380
panick21_ wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you say 'more accurate'. What you state is what I implied. I hope this was clear. What removing subsidies do is unleash the potential. Lots of farming communities that live with subsidies are convinced that removing them is a dooms day scenario. However evidence often doesn't support this. Japan used to protect its market for beef. Then this was forced to be opened by the US. Japan farmer then realized t…

Does it pencil out though? You go from more farmers making less profit and getting subsidy to smooth things over and then they go ahead and spend most of that back in the economy running the business presumably. And the other situation is no subsidy, fewer players as they have to take what little profit there is and spend it more on overhead, and presumably less money reinvested in the local economy overall because o…

That's only true if you ignore that the government can spend that money on something else. And the successful farmers are actually net tax payers.

Compare subsidies to farmers, all farmers are highly inefficient farming with no exports. No great public transport system and roads with potholes.

To:

No subsidies. Highly efficient farmers that export. Fantastic bus connection and roads in the whole countryside.

> take what little profit there is

Before there was no net profit at all, it was a net lose to society. You were moving profits from other sectors to the farm sector.

> And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people

If a farmer is successful, they should make money, just like people in all other sectors in the economy.

Nobody makes the argument that we should subsidize all manufacturing, so that we can have lots of small relatively poor manufacturing sites that lose money.

This if course doesn't necessarily work for every country, but the general doom and gloom about subsidy is often proven wrong.

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

#436

Post by shakna »

motohagiography wrote: post #431
shakna wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What technological innovation do you think farming could adopt, that it hasn't already...? They don't operate with simple machinery. They regularly use some of the most complicated systems that mankind can build, such as satellite systems, chemical analyses, etc. Governance is needed, where progress does not occur naturally.

invent, not adopt. that's the difference between government and industry, government doesn't invent anything except problems to manage. reality is, governments want smallholding farmers out of the business and to replace them with agribusinesses because it's a process of de-kulakizing their subjects. it has nothing to do with science or environment at all. I think maybe a war over this stuff will give us the reset we…

Governments invent things, endlessly. The infrastructure you are communicating with me was invented by a government research department. The encryption we are using to ensure we're actually communicating with HN, is a government research project.

Similarly, the solar systems on most farms, was a government research project. The satellite recon to analyse the farm - provided by the government to all farmers, including the tiniest hobby farm, is 100% government researched, deployed, and maintained.

Governments do a lot more science than you are giving them credit for.

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

#437

Post by signalToNose »

mtsr wrote: post #239
manvillej wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments pay to keep food at the cheapest point possible to ensure stability. a fed population doesn't kill their governments. Agriculture is not a regular industry; its a national security issue Farming is not a profitable endeavor. There would be a lot less financial advisors in the world otherwise. A carbon tax will either drive up prices or reduce suppliers, increasing prices. Reducing farmland will require mo…

Denmark has a population of 5.8 million and currently produces enough to feed 15 million. There’s no need for imports because of 15% less farmland. Besides, all this export only contributes about 1% of GDP. So it’s not economically important either. One can even argue that the reduction in environmental and climate impact will create room for other industries that already are carbon-taxed.

Danmark is one of the biggest producers of Christmas trees

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

#438

Post by mollerhoj »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #132
mollerhoj wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Growing x100 times the amount of food needed isn’t ‘slack’, its production for export (or feeding pigs to export). We could cut out farmland by 50% and still have more than enough to feed our own population. This food security argument would only hold if there was any possibility of us actually not being able to feed our population.

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

#439

Post by fulafel »

BurningFrog wrote: post #384
manvillej wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very conflicted on a carbon tax for the agriculture industry. It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. The transition from regenerative agriculture is expensive & rising food costs has a destabilizing effect. There need to be changes, but I am not convinced that this will have the desired effects. Its quite possible this leads to a net conversion of farmland to residential or commercial…

Carbon taxes are by far the most effective way to get down CO₂ emissions. But I'm doubtful that implementing them only for one industry in one small country is very helpful.

Good news: we're implementing them widely and in all eu countries.

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

#440

Post by m463 »

teekert wrote: post #256
manvillej wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very conflicted on a carbon tax for the agriculture industry. It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. The transition from regenerative agriculture is expensive & rising food costs has a destabilizing effect. There need to be changes, but I am not convinced that this will have the desired effects. Its quite possible this leads to a net conversion of farmland to residential or commercial…

Depends on the type of agriculture? If it make veggies cheaper in comparison to meat, I'm all for it. Hopefully it spurs development of sustainable nice tasting protein sources ;) (like synthetic meat etc.)

I would imagine growing vegetables could be carbon negative, literally making vegetables out of carbon from out of the air?
Post reply on HN