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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

#51

Post by Tade0 »

microtonal wrote: post #43
lokimedes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 da…

I believe the insistence on being a major agricultural producer in the EU despite having some of the largest population densities in the region has a lot to do with it.

A huge chunk of that output is purely for export.

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

#52

Post by dataviz1000 »

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.

Haiti cut down all their trees. When a hurricane passes through it moves what little top soil they have into the ocean.[1] Haiti overfished their costal waters. Now they do not have fish to eat and worse can not participate in the single biggest economic driver in the Caribbean, scuba diving.

Planting trees on farms is incredibly important for maintaining and protecting the soil. The Americans learned that the hard way in the 1930s. [2]]

[1] https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/08/05/us-funded-trees...

[2] https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl

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

#53

Post by Gigachad »

freetanga wrote: post #21
WorkerBee28474 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that proposes any effort that makes it harder to farm is an attempt at subjugating the people Well, it is. More expensive food means a worse quality of life for normal people. It also means more time spent working to pay for groceries, and less time and money to do things that threaten the elites like accumulating capital or performing activism.

The problem is not production cost, but distribution. A litre of milk is paid at 20c to the producer (never has been cheaper) yet it’s 2€ at the store. The producer makes a few cents on it. The FoodCo is the one driving price up. Them and consumer behavior.

There’s quite a lot of expensive stuff happening in between filling a tank of milk at the farm, and a consumer purchasing a single bottle at a store near them.

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

#54

Post by dyauspitr »

Auracle wrote: post #35
cpursley wrote: post #31

Earlier 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 US that would be a bunch of only invasive species for a long time.

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

#55

Post by gklitz »

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 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 farming profitable enough that the entire charade pays off, but that means dumping a ton of fertilizer on the land, which tends to run off and ruin streams and seeps into the ground water. Most recently this has led to the agricultural industry competeley and likely semi permanently destroying the fishing industry around one of the major pars of Denmark. So at this point the farmers have to stop.

There’s a natural way of doing that, which is to cut subsidies and let the market handle it. But the farmers have political power because they have a lot of money because of the policies they’ve set up back when they had political power because they had a lot of money… Anyways, so what is actually happening is that the farmers have decided that if their land is unprofitable then the government needs to pay a hefty price to them for it.

The government could just cut the subsidies which means we would use less money, then buy the land in bankruptcies, likely just with the money we spend less. Instead we’ll see a lot of additional spending to buy the land, and then down the line subsidies will increase to “make up” for all the land they “lost”.

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

#56

Post by tonyedgecombe »

awjlogan wrote: post #26
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.

A lot of “farmland” is unproductive and kept in usage only by heavy subsidies. Additionally, I think a more important/interesting part of the article is taxation of livestock - you reduce the land needed significantly when the amount of livestock is reduced. I’m not vegan/vegetarian but it is “obvious” we should reduce meat consumption for a wide range of reasons and focus on raising livestock in ways that are benefi…

Yes, the least productive 10% of land represents a much smaller percentage of food production. This is often land in areas that are most environmentally sensitive.

In the UK we pay farmers to raise lamb on marginal land yet they still aren't competitive with lamb shipped from the other side of the world. I'm not sure why we should be subsidising that, especially when there is a lot of environmental damaged associated with it.

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

#57

Post by chipdart »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #30
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.

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 result of some major epiphany, it's the natura consequence of having an advanced economy and a huge population with high population density. The EU already imports 40% of the agricultural products it consumes.

EU subsidies were created specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded. Agricultural subsidies exist to create a finantial incentive to preserve current production capacity when it makes no finantial sense, and thus mitigate a strategic vulnerability.

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

#58

Post by phil21 »

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.

I'm of the opinion food security - even at great expense - is the primary thing a nation should be concerned with as a society. At the level where producing enough calories to feed your total population if things truly hit the fan as a hard requirement for every nation on the planet. This is not something you leave to "free trade" or whatnot. Obviously that doesn't mean every calorie need be provided in the most luxurious form - but in the end, there should be enough food produced to feed your people in the worst of times. Even at great expense and waste during the good times.

That all said - farming has gotten vastly more productive both per man hour and per acre over the past 100 years. Logically we simply do not need the same amount of land devoted to agriculture as we did before - at least in most cases.

So long as your food security is not being impacted - and I do mean under the worst possible stress model you can come up with - I don't see a problem with plans like this. Land use changes over time, and it should be expected.

Plus, it looks like a large portion of this will be simply a different form of agriculture - forestry. This will probably be more in-demand in 50-100 years with current trends, but that's a wild guess.

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

#59

Post by freetanga »

Gigachad wrote: post #53
freetanga wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not production cost, but distribution. A litre of milk is paid at 20c to the producer (never has been cheaper) yet it’s 2€ at the store. The producer makes a few cents on it. The FoodCo is the one driving price up. Them and consumer behavior.

There’s quite a lot of expensive stuff happening in between filling a tank of milk at the farm, and a consumer purchasing a single bottle at a store near them.

[flagged]

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

#60

Post by cpursley »

microtonal wrote: post #46
cpursley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

How do we keep people fed after shutting down farming (at a reasonable cost)? The entire thing seems anti-human…
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