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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

#91

Post by mollerhoj »

_w1tm wrote: post #79
0xy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.. anything is to some degree.

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

#92

Post by aziaziazi »

zo1 wrote: post #42
sidcool wrote: post #3

Didn'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 live…

It’s funny how I also feel peanuts when I vote for elections but also feel very engaged and powerful with that paper holding a nano-minuscule fraction of power.

> They're destroying their own industry and people's livelihood and food security, for barely moving the needle on the altar of enviromentalism.

The environnemental impact of their AG is peanuts on a global scale but cause massive problems on their own lands and coast. Food security will still be largely fine : there’s large surpluses and you are actually safer stocking grains than livestock, especially in modern silos. For industry and livelihood I’m sure those guys are smart enough to shift to others activities. That may be quite easy when you look at the current meat industry profitability.

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

#93

Post by simonask »

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.

This isn't really true. Growing a forest is way more complicated than you might think - they don't just sprout spontaneously, as trees take a long time to grow and are easily kept down by fauna, landscape, nutrient levels, erosion, and many other factors.

I don't remember the details, but I believe it goes something like farm -> heath -> shrubland -> young forest -> mature forest, where each phase has a unique ecosystem of both plant species and animal life.

In an extremely heavily cultivated landscape like Denmark (seriously, look at a satellite photo), converting farmland back into forest is a multi-decade project requiring constant maintenance. Converting farmland into marshland (which is the "original" stone-age landscape in many areas) is a multi-century project.

Just like it was a multi-century project to convert it into farmland, by the way. Europe has been cultivated for millennia.

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

#94

Post by simonask »

cpursley wrote: post #39
microtonal wrote: post #36

Earlier 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?

Farm animal excrement is far from the whole picture. Fertilization is the main contributor (and animal excrement is used for that, but far from exclusively).

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

#95

Post by simonask »

exe34 wrote: post #27
AlotOfReading wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Danish agricultural industry accounts for 1% of GDP and almost 70% of land use, the highest in the world. The Wikipedia page on Denmark doesn't even bother to list it as a major industry (unlike Lego) and the only figures I could find put it at around 8B DKK. Lego does 66B DKK on its own. What criteria are you using?

Lego is not edible. they'll need food in the coming war.

By the last metric I saw, Denmark produces food for about 12 million people, and that's mainly animal products. Denmark has a population of 6 million.

Cutting food production in half would not jeopardize food security. Switching focus to plant-based food production would more than double it again.

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

#96

Post by simonask »

Auracle wrote: post #38
sidcool wrote: post #3

Didn't Bill Gates once say that planting trees has no impact on global warming?

And he’d be right. When those trees die and then rot or burn, that CO2 will be released right back into the atmosphere. They’ll temporarily hold some, yeah, but it’s like trying to rapidly fire a squirt gun at a fire when someone else is spraying it with a firehose of gasoline. Especially because trees plant themselves. If they want to set aside the land for forest and seed it a little to get going - great - but thos…

The point of planting trees in Denmark is not to cut CO2 emissions. The point is to restore biodiversity and the health of the environment. I assume the situation is similar in countries like the Netherlands.

Climate and environment are two separate things, and are in fact sometimes at odds with each other. Denmark is doing semi-alright on climate, but is absolutely terrible on environment. Aquatic ecosystems in the country are basically completely destroyed by agriculture, to the point where previously productive shallow waters are completely dead due to oxygen depletion.

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

#97

Post by simonask »

zo1 wrote: post #42
sidcool wrote: post #3

Didn'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 live…

This is a type of fallacy. Denmark as a country is politically relatively powerless compared to China or the US, or even Germany, but each citizen has about the same or more power compared to each citizen in those larger countries.

The fallacy is to say "I, as an individual in a small country, cannot do anything because these other large countries are, collectively, much more powerful". Well, no kidding. Any Denmark-sized administrative section of a larger country (say, a US state, a Chinese province, or a German bundesland) has the same or smaller influence on the climate. Often a much smaller influence due to how international diplomacy works.

It's a category error. Whether progress is made in Denmark-sized chunks or in US/EU/China/Germany-sized chunks is irrelevant, as long as the average velocity per human is the same on a global scale. It's not high enough at the moment, but it's equally significant wherever it happens.

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

#98

Post by simonask »

phil21 wrote: post #58
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 luxu…

Denmark is not even close to jeopardizing its food supply, even less its food security. It produces way more food than is needed to feed its own population.

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

#99

Post by sshine »

panick21_ wrote: post #64
chipdart wrote: post #57

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. 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…

> specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded No, its because far lobbies are an important political block

Both can be true.

Protecting your agricultural capacity is what convinces the part of the population that does not directly benefit from the subsidies.

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

#100

Post by simonask »

inglor_cz wrote: post #4

In many parts of Europe, forested areas have actually grown since the 20th and especially the 19th century. People no longer use wood as a fuel, or in very small amounts compared to the past, and some former pastures have been re-colonized by trees. Czechia is currently 34 per cent forest. Used to be less than 20 per cent in the Theresian cadastre (mid 18-th century).

In comparison, Denmark is currently at only 15% forest.

This is up from about 2% in the early 1800s, back when ships were built from wood, and firewood was used for heating. Funnily, the slow and steady build-up during those 200 years was partially motivated by the fact that when the British destroyed the fleet in 1807, there was simply not enough wood to build a new one.

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