[HN Gopher] Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farml...
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Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest
Author : geox
Score : 165 points
Date : 2024-11-24 05:59 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| dataflow wrote:
| Anyone know if they plan to chop down the trees when they grow
| and use the wood somehow, so they can capture more carbon through
| growing new trees?
| geewee wrote:
| Yes, some of the forests will be untouched nature but a good
| chunk of it will be for timber production.
| dataflow wrote:
| Awesome, thanks!
| sidcool wrote:
| Didn't Bill Gates once say that planting trees has no impact on
| global warming?
| ggm wrote:
| The trees will ride through floods and reduce water flows,
| improve species diversity for insects, birds, small mammals,
| improve temperatures and ameliorate winds, provide shelter for
| farm animals, can enhance grazing. And there's wood to harvest
| in due course.
|
| There's a lot more reasons to plant trees than direct AGW
| offset.
|
| A huge amount of farmland is now surplus to production. Grasses
| and fields of weeds aren't always ideal. Taking land out of
| production can also attract offset funding for farmers (-yes,
| this is a secondary economic outcome and may also incur other
| costs)
|
| People are healthier around trees. People like trees. Even Bill
| Gates may actually like trees.
| notRobot wrote:
| Trees absolutely can help with climate change, although like
| everything in this universe, there are nuances at play, such as
| type of tree, location, etc.
|
| We have done a lot of deforestation, and that absolutely has
| negatively impacted our climate, and we should work to reverse
| it.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| He also once said that 640KB should be enough for anyone, so
| ... let's take his opinion with a grain of salt. Affluence does
| not equal wisdom.
| ndjdjddjsjj wrote:
| He denies it, and even if he said it, it was 1981 and I doubt
| he meant "forever".
|
| > Affluence does not equal wisdom.
|
| True
|
| Just waiting for someone to factcheck about planting trees:
| there must be nuance. In australia we burn em to protect
| people and the environment for example. We have done it for
| millenia.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| 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 those large tree planting operations are a waste of
| time at best or carbon credit loopholes at worst.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| notRobot wrote:
| The corollary to this would be that deforestation hasn't make
| climate change worse, and a simple Google search tells me
| that:
|
| > Deforestation plays a significant role in climate change,
| contributing 12-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions
| missedthecue wrote:
| Most global deforestation involves slash and burn. This
| releases the carbon stored in the trees. But I think that's
| OPs point. A growing tree doesn't remove carbon, it
| temporarily stores it until it dies or burns.
| zo1 wrote:
| 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.
| kolinko wrote:
| Plastic pollution in the oceans has nothing to do with
| climate change.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| 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.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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).
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Just open google maps and take a stroll across europe...
| dachris wrote:
| Indeed. A few years ago I ran across a comparison of old
| photographs of rural villages (early 20th century) in central
| Europe vs their present day appearance, taken from similar
| points of view.
|
| Two things were immediately apparent from the old photographs -
| less forest - tons of fruit trees
|
| Fitting is also this anecdote I heard when visiting a
| historical mill. They had a huge linden tree in their yard, and
| they told us that in the olden days this was a symbol of
| prosperity, because the original owner showed off that they
| could afford to plant a useless, non-fruit-bearing - a status
| symbol.
|
| Coming full circle - the best thing would be if we could plant
| tons of trees that also produce food - something like the
| baobabs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adansonia_digitata . E.g.
| pigs were fed oak's acorns in fall.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Climate getting milder has also meant the tree line, and thus
| forest line, has moved up quite a lot[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.forskning.no/norges-forskningsrad-partner-
| miljoo...
| cpursley wrote:
| It's the same in America, there's actually more trees now than
| at the time of European settlement. A combo of the large
| buffalo herds that used to roam and native land management that
| often involved burning entire forests.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| That 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.
| lokimedes wrote:
| (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.
| danieldk wrote:
| 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).
| Tade0 wrote:
| 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > 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)
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| > Let's hope butter and bacon from Poland is going to cover
| our needs.
|
| That's really hilarious: Poland imports it's pork from
| Denmark.
|
| (ASF and almost no piglets breeding)
| jopsen wrote:
| If we end up going hungry (or food prices spiking), then this
| policy might be adjusted.
|
| It's not like this will happen overnight anyways.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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?
| exe34 wrote:
| Lego is not edible. they'll need food in the coming war.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > A growing population require food.
|
| Sure, but Europe's not growing. It is purely in "shrink
| forever" mode. This is easily measured, any time fertility
| drops below 2.1 that's what happens. But ignore that a moment,
| what if you wanted to depopulate Europe? This might be a good
| policy for that. Get the timing just right, and it's not even a
| genocide... food shortages that don't starve anyone just
| encourages the last few breeders to put a lid on it, and voila!
| The fantasy of more than a few out there.
| Sabinus wrote:
| Good luck. In the less cohesive Western countries efforts like
| this are met with both protest by farmers who view their
| providing calories as almost a sacred task, and by foreign
| agitprop that proposes any effort that makes it harder to farm is
| an attempt at subjugating the people.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Believe me the farmers have been doing their best to buck this.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > 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.
| freetanga wrote:
| 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 2EUR at the store. The producer makes a few
| cents on it.
|
| The FoodCo is the one driving price up. Them and consumer
| behavior.
| Gigachad wrote:
| 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.
| freetanga wrote:
| Yes, some necessary (processing, bottling, logistics)
| some fluff (marketing), and lots of profits.
|
| But the original point was that removing farm capacity
| will increase consumer prices. Even if doubles farmer
| prices (to 40c), milk retail prices should only increase
| by 20c.
|
| Of course, all milk processors (which are a cartel) will
| double their prices, double their margins, and pitch
| consumers vs farmers vs ecologists.
|
| 21st Century Capitalism.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| This is just conjecture without proof, followed by a lazy
| shot at capitalism. https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-
| capitalism
|
| At the very least, provide some citation that a 20 cent
| increase in production price would cause a 2 euro
| increase in consumer price, as you claimed.
| cpursley wrote:
| Feeding people is a sacred task. Food is literally the base
| pillar of various human needs pyramids.
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| shitlibs' contempt for farmers of all people is a real mask off
| moment
| pkulak wrote:
| No they won't. If they started tomorrow planting 100,000 trees a
| day, and never took a single day off, they would finish up in
| 2052. What kind of nursery can even grow 100,000 saplings of
| conifer a day?
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-climate-deniers-pl...
| im3w1l wrote:
| Saplings? Wouldn't it be easier to seed? Or you could plant a
| few more mature trees sparsely and rely on them to seed?
| jltsiren wrote:
| It would take a couple of years at the scale Finnish forest
| industry is operating.
|
| Large parts of Europe are basically forests that have been
| temporarily cut down. If you let the land be, the forest will
| often grow back with minimal effort.
| alberth wrote:
| Using seedballs, you could conceivably plant 1B trees in just a
| couple _months_ by dropping the seedballs from airplanes.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBbU4MQftc8
| ksec wrote:
| 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.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Where else would you like them to plant trees? Tearing up
| residential areas to convert to forest would be massively
| expensive and likely unpopular.
| cpursley wrote:
| Places that used to be forested and are not productive
| farmland. There's lots of places like this, just maybe not in
| Denmark.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Not really. Trees plant themselves. If it's not being
| actively used for something/mowed it'll turn back into
| forest.
| pintxo wrote:
| (In the absence of grass and small tree devouring
| animals)
| dyauspitr wrote:
| In the US that would be a bunch of only invasive species
| for a long time.
| cpursley wrote:
| Tree planting in eroded/damaged ecosystems requires a
| helping hand - everything from site prep, germination,
| watering, etc.
|
| Source: I've planted thousands of trees.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| That last bit is correct, there aren't many places like
| that in Denmark. So the original question remains, where
| would be a better place for them specifically to plant
| these trees?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| 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
| in both countries.
| cpursley wrote:
| The idea that farting cows is moving the needle on climate is
| absolutely lunacy - barking mad conspiracy theory stuff.
| danieldk wrote:
| 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.)
| cpursley wrote:
| Now that's a real problem, farm animal excrement is an
| issue. Seems like one that technology can solve?
| danieldk wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| How do we keep people fed after shutting down farming (at
| a reasonable cost)? The entire thing seems anti-human...
| danieldk wrote:
| Eating less meat?
|
| _The questions are mainly targeted at the consumption of
| animal products: meat, dairy products and eggs. Their
| research shows that reducing the consumption of animal
| products, and therefore switching from a meat-eating to a
| vegetarian or vegan diet, reduces land requirements by
| two-thirds._
|
| https://www.uu.nl/en/news/calculate-the-land-use-impact-
| of-y...
|
| Not everyone even has to stop eating meat. Just reducing
| meat consumption to 1-2 days per week would go a long
| way.
| fatuna wrote:
| Nobody wants to shut down all the farming, just reduce
| it. For example, the Netherlands produces 250% of its own
| meat consumption. Since it's subsidized, the net
| financial gain is very low. You could say reducing the
| production to 125/150% of consumption would leave enough
| for local consumption plus a little export in good times
| or a buffer in bad times.
|
| Unfortunately, big agricultural companies hired a
| marketing company to start a political party which claims
| to be pro local/small farmers, but is actually just pro
| big agriculture.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| The project aims at shit to no only a portions of the
| farms, and especially one from the meat industry. They'll
| still have plenty of food.
| simonask wrote:
| 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).
| cpursley wrote:
| Yeah, fertilizer getting into the watershed is a real
| problem. It wreaks entire ecosystems.
| linuxandrew wrote:
| Farting maybe, but the impact from cow burps is measurable
| and no conspiracy theory.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17517715/
| awjlogan wrote:
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| I was just reusing the term op used. And that's a tiny
| percentage if the trade off is keeping humans fed.
| awjlogan wrote:
| No, it's a huge amount relative to the nutrition it
| actually provides. There is so much terrible (by any
| metric apart from maybe direct monetary cost) meat
| consumed and there are vested interests in a lot of
| industries to maintain that status quo.
|
| Don't get me wrong, good meat is delicious and there are
| plenty of ecosystems that require grazing and large
| herbivores to maintain, but the current system is
| devastating and doesn't provide nearly as much nutrition
| to the end user as it consumes in its production.
| kolinko wrote:
| The math here is quite simple.
|
| A single cow can produce around 250 to 500 liters of
| methane per day through belching and farting. Let's take an
| average of 400 liters/day. Methane is a potent greenhouse
| gas.
|
| _400 liters /day x 365 days = 146,000 liters/year._
|
| Convert to kilograms (since methane's density is ~0.656
| kg/m3):
|
| _146,000 liters = 146 m3 - 146 x 0.656 kg = 95.8 kg of
| methane /year per cow._
|
| Methane has a global warming potential (GWP) of about 28
| times that of CO2 over 100 years. So, 1 kg of methane is
| equivalent to 28 kg of CO2 in terms of warming effect.
|
| _95.8 kg of methane x 28 = 2,682 kg of CO2 equivalent per
| year per cow._
|
| _2,682 kg CO2e /year x 1 billion cows = 2.68 billion
| metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually._
| cpursley wrote:
| Cool. Now compare cow farts to all other sources, that's
| the only metric that matters.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| A quick search shows that global c02 emissions are about
| 35 billion tons.
|
| So the cow farts are a bit less than 8%. That isn't
| insignificant.
| cpursley wrote:
| And how much of a dent would reducing cow consumption by
| 25% make?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| You said that cow emissions weren't significant (well,
| that it was "absolute lunacy").
|
| Two people have provided rough calculations that show
| they do have a measurable effect.
|
| What's your point?
| cpursley wrote:
| My point is people should do the math and come to their
| own reasonable conclusion. Assuming these numbers aren't
| totally bullshit (see what I did there) this won't move
| the needle unless we cut out cow consumption 100% and
| cull all native herd animals.
|
| Me? I think we can probably survive some cow farts as our
| ancestors who hunted buffalo and burnt down entire
| ecosystems doing so did. We should focus on the real
| solutions that will move the needle, like proper human-
| scale city design and nuclear power.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Knowing they alone account for over 1/20th of the climate
| change effect though is useful information.
|
| Maybe there are other ways we could reduce their methane
| emissions short of getting rid of all of them.
|
| I agree that other solutions are needed to properly
| address climate change though.
| cpursley wrote:
| There's a ton we can do before taking food off our
| children's table.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I don't think anyone was talking about taking food off
| children's tables?
| cpursley wrote:
| Because that's exactly what reducing farming output does.
| neither_color wrote:
| I don't know enough about this topic but my question is
| what is the input to the 250-500l cow fart equation.
| What's being consumed to produce that much methane?
| Chilko wrote:
| It's not - in New Zealand 35% of GHG emissions are from
| cattle, with over 53% from agriculture in general.
|
| Source: https://environment.govt.nz/publications/new-
| zealands-greenh...
| timc3 wrote:
| 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
| chickenbig wrote:
| > 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).
| nobodywillobsrv wrote:
| For a short period I looked into carbon stuff and while
| forests were good, wetlands were deemed much bigger sinks.
|
| It feels like wetlands is a huge ignored area. If what I
| read at the time holds (I think it was like 6-12x
| sequestration rate in some regions), a simple thing like
| rising sea levels would have a huge impact.
|
| And anthropogenic destruction of wetlands is also a huge
| issue and one that is relatively easy to reverse in a lot
| cases (dams, rerouted rivers). And in some cases, water can
| just be rerouted occasionally to create temperarly wetlands
| that are good ecosystems as well. Mossy Earth I think is
| doing some of these.
| chickenbig wrote:
| Strangely enough I have been seeing wetland creation
| coming up on my radar recently. Hinkley Point C nuclear
| power station has been proposing these as alternative to
| acoustic fish deterrent, but the locals who might be
| affected are not happy.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzwrgv71no
| It would transform the biodiverse habitat into barren,
| species-poor salt marsh and tidal mud.
|
| https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-10-09/debates/
| 230...
| awjlogan wrote:
| 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
| beneficial to the wider environment.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| 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.
| Epa095 wrote:
| Could food security in case of another global crisis be a
| good enough reason? I don't know anything about the British
| situation AT ALL, but I think many in Europe think slightly
| different about the market-based solution when it comes to
| both food, medicines, and other essentials after corona.
|
| It turns out that when shit hits the fan, countries need to
| handle the basic needs of their population themselves.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You'd need firewood too.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| 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 can easily let
| go of 10% while only having miniscule effects on the economy.
| Denmark is a very small country and technically has no truly
| wild nature.
| chipdart wrote:
| > 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical
| risk of seeing Europe blockaded
|
| No, its because far lobbies are an important political
| block
| sshine wrote:
| Both can be true.
|
| Protecting your agricultural capacity is what convinces
| the part of the population that does not directly benefit
| from the subsidies.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That's just admitting that it is just justification.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Yes and? If it keeps 20% of the country alive during a
| twice in a century event that it's a good justification.
| chipdart wrote:
| > No, its because far lobbies are an important political
| block
|
| Wrong. If you try to educate yourself, you will notice
| that EU's common agricultural policy even went to the
| extent of paying subsidies to small property owners to
| preserve their properties as agricultural land. This goes
| way beyond subsidizing production, or anything remotely
| related to your conspiracy theory.
|
| Just because someone benefits from subsidy programs that
| does not mean that any conspiracy theory spun around the
| inversion of cause and effect suddenly makes sense. I
| recommend you invest a few minutes to learn about EU's
| common agricultural policy before trying to fill that
| void with conspiracies.
| panick21_ wrote:
| They can write all they want. The fact is, the countries
| wouldn't cant get rid of their farm policies because of
| voting. And the EU, is an outgrowth of those already
| existing countries. EU policy is not handed down from a
| white tower. Of course you can't actually say that.
| darkwater wrote:
| Farmers and people supporting farmers are still a small
| minority and while they can probably swing some election
| in some country if they were to massively support only
| one party or coalition, the money comes for the strategic
| importance. It would be naive to think it's just "for the
| votes".
| Retric wrote:
| Resistance to a blockade doesn't require subsidies for
| growing flowers etc.
|
| Subsidizing exports similarly has very different goals.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Sure it does. The goal is keep the farmland available and
| productive along with keeping agricultural
| infrastructure. The USA helped win WW2 because our car
| factory lines were retooled to make war machines.
| llm_trw wrote:
| You'd think that people would have realized this after
| Europe avoided mass death from Russian gas being cut off
| only because the winter was mild.
| neoromantique wrote:
| Considering that we're doing the barest of the minimum
| about it three years in, yeah, you'd think.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I think you meant _financial_
| bondarchuk wrote:
| 3.6% of bnp seems like little but I think agriculture counts
| for more than, say, management consulting that goes through 5
| intermediaries (does it get counted towards the bnp 5x then?
| I'm not sure). At the end of the day money is only an
| abstraction while food, you can actually eat it.
| apexalpha wrote:
| 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.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| 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
| eesmith wrote:
| > The Americans learned that the hard way in the 1930s.
|
| Grasses, not trees, maintained and protected the soil for
| what became the US Dust Bowl.
|
| The "Great American Desert" was essentially treeless. As your
| [2] links points out, European agricultural methods
| "[exposed] the bare, over-plowed farmland. Without deep-
| rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to
| blow away."
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| > "Like all the others, he had allowed the advertisers to
| multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with
| possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop.
| Like all the others, he had abandoned any idea of
| subsistence farming to think exclusively in terms of a cash
| crop; and he had gone on thinking in those terms, even when
| the crop no longer gave him any cash. Then, like all the
| others, he had got into debt with the banks. And finally,
| like all the others, he had learned that what the experts
| had been saying for a generation was perfectly true : in a
| semi-arid country it is grass that holds down the soil;
| tear up the grass, the soil will go. In due course, it had
| gone.
|
| The man from Kansas was now a peon and a pariah; and the
| experience was making a worse man of him."
|
| -- Aldous Huxley, "After Many a Year Dies the Swan" -- 1939
|
| They were warned what would happen. Yes, it was the grasses
| that keep the soil in place.
|
| However, as the article you referenced says,
|
| > "As part of Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress established
| the Soil Erosion Service and the Prairie States Forestry
| Project in 1935. These programs put local farmers to work
| planting trees as windbreaks on farms across the Great
| Plains. The Soil Erosion Service, now called the Natural
| Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) developed and
| promoted new farming techniques to combat the problem of
| soil erosion." [2]
|
| A bunch of people didn't understand this in Haiti and now
| they are severely doomed and suffering. Probably not
| something you want to be incorrect about on the global
| scale.
|
| Although, it is the grasses that hold the top soil in
| place, it can be mitigated by planting trees.
| eesmith wrote:
| > They were warned what would happen.
|
| They also believed in "rain follows the plow."
|
| > windbreaks on farms
|
| Sure,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains_Shelterbelt .
|
| But that was only one of many techniques developed. https
| ://archive.org/details/bighughfatherofs0000well/page/11..
| . mentions "if subject to wind erosion, it calls for
| stubble-mulch farming, wind strips and windbreaks."
| (That's a biography about Hugh Hammond Bennett, who led
| the Soil Erosion Service ... but not the Shelterbelt!)
|
| In general (a few paragraphs earlier):
|
| 'Modern soil conservation is based on sound land use and
| the treatment of land with those adaptable, practical
| measures that keep it permanently productive while in
| use," he explains. "It means terracing land that needs
| terracing; and it means contouring, strip cropping, and
| stubble-mulching the land as needed, along with
| supporting practices of crop rotations, cover crops,
| etc., wherever needed. It means gully control,
| stabilizing water outlets, building farm ponds, locating
| farm roads and fences on the contour, and planting steep,
| erodible lands to grass or trees."'
|
| Earlier at https://archive.org/details/bighughfatherofs00
| 00well/page/96... you can read about the then-novel idea
| of contouring;
|
| "Tillage is proceeding across the slopes, rather than up
| and down hill. It is being done on the contour on 15,362
| acres. Farmers are finding that it not only serves as a
| brake on running water but also reduces the cost of mule-
| power and tractor-power."
|
| Oh, interesting. In 'Predicting and Controlling Wind
| Erosion', Lyles (1985) writes "Despite the credit the
| Prairie States Forestry Project has received in ending
| the Dust Bowl, windbreak plantings under the Project did
| not begin on a large scale until 1936", and says "the
| cardinal principle of wind erosion control is maintaining
| vegetative materials on the soil. ... this practice of
| conserving or maintaining vegetation on the surface has
| evolved into various forms of tillage management, which
| currently go under the generic name of conservation
| tillage and have become a major technique for erosion
| control." (See
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3742385.pdf )
|
| This suggests again that trees and windbreaks in general
| are not the primary solution to the regions affected by
| the Dust Bowl, but rather grasses, including crops.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| I don't see how Haiti situation applies to Denmark.
| JoshGG wrote:
| You left out the part where Haiti was destabilized and
| crushed by colonial debt. And I don't think that lack of fish
| is what's keeping the tourists away. But hey, weren't we
| talking about Denmark ?
| tbrownaw wrote:
| So is that relevant because it means that cutting down all
| the trees want their fault, or because it provides an
| alternate explanation for what mechanism is causing the
| soil to else?
|
| And obviously the connection to Denmark is meant to be that
| a lack of trees causes problems so replacing things with
| trees must be good. Even if there hasn't been news about
| those problems happening there.
| gklitz wrote:
| 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".
| panick21_ wrote:
| In New Zealand the believe that if they removed farm
| subsidizes, their farmers would quite. Now they are a massive
| farm product exporter.
| 0xy wrote:
| 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 subsidies in
| 2022. But this isn't market distortion to the same degree as
| farming subsidies, is it? That's the flaw in your argument.
| It's inconsistently applied based on politics, isn't it?
| awjlogan wrote:
| There's a big difference between supporting food security
| and subsidising otherwise unviable land usage and farming
| practices. In the UK, there are subsidies for upland
| farming for sheep with produces a negligible amount of food
| at high cost (monetary and environmental) for next to no
| return for the farmers even after the subsidy.
|
| Re. green subsidies that is better characterised as
| investment in technology of the future. You might also like
| to compare subsidies to the fossil fuel sector as well.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| 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.
| mollerhoj wrote:
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
| chipdart wrote:
| > How does having such a large surplus (...)
|
| You should educate yourself. Europe imports around 40% of
| the agricultural production it consumes.
|
| The "surplus" is referenced in economical value and
| reflects luxury exports such as wine, which is hardly
| what keeps Europe alive in case of all-out war.
|
| The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is
| food security including an event of all-out war.
|
| Your comments sound like advocating against having a
| first-aid kit just because you sell silk scarves.
| thworp wrote:
| Please provide some sources, because I think your 40% is
| also based on monetary and not nutritional value.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Destroying fisheries goes directly against food security.
| Fishes are more efficient as source of food by energetic
| reasons.
| gklitz wrote:
| I don't understand why this is being downvoted but this
| is very true, and it's the literal case that the
| fisheries around the entirety of the Bornholm region of
| Denmark have been completely shut down because the
| farming industry runoff destroyed it. Had it not been for
| subsidies the farming industry wouldn't have done this.
| We literally paid people to deliberately destroy our
| environment. Is insane and everyone's just looking to the
| sky like "what are we supposed to do? We've tried nothing
| at all even though there has been consistent warnings for
| two decades and it still happened!?"
| gklitz wrote:
| > Anyway, it's clear that your position is political in
| nature otherwise you'd be just as outraged by green
| subsidies.
|
| The green subsidies are also paid out to farmers... it is
| outrageous. Imagine if we were still paying subsidies to
| weavers because of their "strategic importance in case of
| war" and also paying them green subsidies to avoid using
| the toxic chemicals they would otherwise use doing the
| thing they are only doing in the first place because it
| justifies the theater that has the state maintaining their
| consistent income.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Farming subsidies are a national security tool, not a
| handout.
|
| It's absurd to not acknowledge they are both.
| chipdart wrote:
| > Because it's becoming increasingly obviously dumb to be
| paying farmers money to pretend like they are farming their
| land.
|
| This is a particularly ignorant and clueless opinion to have.
|
| The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is to
| preserve the potential of agricultural production as a
| strategic asset. Europe's strong economy and huge population
| density, coupled with cheap access to agricultural production
| from south America and Africa, renders most agricultural
| activity economically unfeasible. The problem is that this
| means Europe is particularly vulnerable to a blockade, and in
| case of all out war the whole continent risks being starved
| in a few months.
|
| The whole point of EU's common agricultural policy is to
| minimize this risk.
|
| Owners of farmland are provided a incentive to keep their
| farms on standby even if they don't produce anything exactly
| to mitigate this risk. It would be more profitable to invest
| in some domains such as, say, real estate. Look at the
| Netherlands: they are experiencing a huge housing crisis and
| the whole land in Holland consists of dense urban housing
| bordered by farm land. It would be tempting for farmers to
| just cash out on real estate if they didn't had an economic
| upside.
|
| You would do better if you educated yourself on a topic
| before commenting on it.
| credit_guy wrote:
| With this type of argument you can demonstrate that lots of
| things have strategic importance. Steel? Check. Textiles?
| Check. Asphalt? Check. We should subsidize everything. Yet,
| when the military threat actually materializes and you need
| to manufacture 155mm shells, all the strategic planning
| seems quite useless.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| In the US, we have sextupled 155mm shell production.
|
| If war breaks out, you need to feed people, maintain
| roads, build vehicles, etc.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Europe has a huge coastline, it's impossible to blockade.
| If war breaks out, it's better to shift workers from
| agriculture to war-related production, and import food
| from places that are not at war, such as South America.
| Food produced in Europe is basically a luxury. For every
| kilogram of beef produced in Denmark, you can buy 2.5 kg
| of Argentinian beef.
| PrismCrystal wrote:
| While Europe has a long coastline, there are only a given
| number of ports capable of the high thoroughput needed to
| feed Europe's population. Blockade those and the entrance
| to the Baltic and Mediterranean, and most of your work is
| done. Moreover, in a shooting war, merchant ships from
| other global regions attempting to supply Europe would be
| targeted.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Who is this hypothetical battle to be fought against?
| Surely anyone with sufficient power to mount a blockade
| has nuclear missiles and at that point it's kind of
| moot...
|
| Note that I actually agree with your position but this is
| an interesting discussion on a topic I hadn't thought
| about deeply enough!
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Everything you are listing is indeed very much strategic
| and Europe was indeed extremely stupid to let that go.
| The end of your paragraph is a demonstration of that. It
| doesn't go against the core idea.
| gklitz wrote:
| > It would be tempting for farmers to just cash out on real
| estate if they didn't had an economic upside.
|
| That's tempting even with subsidies. I have friend who own
| farming land at the outskirts of the city, they rent it to
| a farmer at almost net zero to themselves after taxes, but
| would make a small fortune if they could develop the land.
| The reason farmers don't sell their land to real estate and
| 100x the value instantly isn't that they don't want to
| because of subsidies, it's that they aren't allowed to due
| to zoning laws, and zoning laws are what they are to
| protect property values, because everyone involved in
| designing them own at minimum one property. The only
| political party we have representing renters in any
| capacity never get any power in the governmental bodies
| that govern zoning laws.
|
| > The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is
| to preserve the potential of agricultural production as a
| strategic asset.
|
| Nothing about that required the current setup. Imagine if
| we were talking about government subsidies for private
| militias because we needed to maintain the much more
| directly important military capacity. Wouldn't that be
| crazy? Why is the farming subsidies seen differently. Why
| must the government pay to private institutions who's worth
| had disappeared. If we want governments to maintain
| farmable land so be it. We don't have to finically support
| an artificial elite based them having owned a one
| profitable asset. Just let it degrade in value and buy it
| when it hits bottom.
| cco wrote:
| > Imagine if we were talking about government subsidies
| for private militias because we needed to maintain the
| much more directly important military capacity. Wouldn't
| that be crazy?
|
| Not really? It is very protective to maintain an
| agricultural, energy, and industrial base; not doing so
| is immensely risky.
|
| Take Germany the first winter after the Ukraine invasion
| as an example, a mad scramble to fill a huge hole in
| their energy sector. Imagine the same scenario but with
| food, or munitions.
|
| You simply cannot rely solely on global supply chains for
| industries that are critical to survival of a nation. The
| ability to power, feed, and defend yourself is a primary
| concern of a nation state and is worth economic
| inefficiency.
|
| With all that said, I have _no_ idea how Europe and
| Denmark specifically does subsidies for agriculture. It
| could be asinine. But philosophically, imo, it is
| uncontroversially necessary in some form or another. It
| is far too risky to save a penny on importing wheat from
| Brazil and risk famines.
| phil21 wrote:
| 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.
| smilingsun wrote:
| Read the post by gklitz: Agricultural practices are ruining
| the water supply. It's nice to have food security, but you
| also need drinkable water.
|
| Groundwater in Denmark is drinkable and most people wanna
| keep it that way. But unfortunately, fertilizer has killed of
| huge areas of sealife.
| usrnm wrote:
| > That all said - farming has gotten vastly more productive
| both per man hour and per acre over the past 100 years
|
| We also have way more people to feed and house than 100 years
| ago, you cannot look at productivity increase in isolation,
| demand for both food and land has also risen significantly.
| simonask wrote:
| 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.
| chipdart wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Denmark is a part of the EU. Their agricultural policy
| follows EU's common agricultural policy. Food security is
| evaluated accounting for all members, not individual
| member-states in isolation. In case of a scenario that puts
| food security at risk, such as an all-out war, it's in her
| best interests of all member states if the whole Europe can
| preserve it's food security.
| simonask wrote:
| If we are ever in a situation where food security becomes
| a real issue in the EU - and that's an almost
| unfathomably big if - then the first step would be to
| actually grow food for humans, instead of food for
| animals that are then exported to China as meat products.
|
| Food security is simply not a relevant concern here.
| 7952 wrote:
| The argument about security comes up a lot and makes
| intuitive sense. Although it seems far more complex than just
| protecting farmland and a simple yearly statistic. Developed
| countries can be ridiculously dependent on centralised supply
| chains to process and deliver food. And many of the inputs
| and equipment require a complex industrial base to support.
| We don't just need the space to grow food. We need to feed
| it, protect it from pests, harvest it, process it, deliver it
| to people. In most countries Iit is very dependent on
| electricity, heavy industry and global trade for equipment.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Simple: Germany has a huge export surplus that China and the
| USA is unwilling to accept anymore.
|
| Also, German economy is stagnate, based on a cheap russian gas
| and cooperation with china. So now, the idea is to target South
| America for exports while balancing it with import of South
| American foodstuff(EU-Mercosur agreement, that we know will not
| be ratified by individual countries in a democratic process,
| but by the Commission).
|
| The problem Germany has to fix is the Common Agricultural
| Policy, that's one of the pillars of the EU. They are using the
| Green Agenda to force countries to reforest their fields. Of
| course the whole reforestation program is designed in a way
| that benefits states (Germany) that have got rid of their
| forests long time ago, and is unfavorable for countries that
| developed their agriculture after the WW2 - like Denmark and
| Finland.
|
| Expect a heated discussion between Germany and France, rise of
| right wing parties in smaller countries, and a push for
| stricter integration.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/11/19/eu-mercosur-tra...
|
| https://forest.fi/article/whos-to-pay-the-cost-of-eus-nature...
|
| https://hir.harvard.edu/germanys-energy-crisis-europes-leadi...
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Germany has been leaching off the EU for so long through the
| weak Euro, they now think it will always work. They are
| clearly putting France on a fast track to an exit via a far
| right government with the whole Mercosur agreement debacle.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I think that there is an official and an unofficial reason. The
| official is that something must be returned to nature before
| climate change destroys everything. The unofficial is, in my
| opinion, that EU politicians are terrified by US elections.
|
| In all western countries, far right groups are crawling to grab
| more and more power gradually. Those groups feed basically on
| farmer followers, ruthlessly brainwashed with fake news,
| antiscience and outrage, and the system has proven to work well
| (See US).
|
| Until now traditional parties believed that could control the
| situation and appease the farmers with more money, and maybe
| even benefit of some votes of grateful people on return. The
| wake up has being brutal. Each euro given to farmers is just a
| victory reclaimed by this groups, that nurture a higher
| discontent.
|
| So now that they are coming for they political heads and the
| time is running out, traditional politicians feel the pressure
| to take some delayed unpleasant decisions before is too late,
| and getting rid of the fake farmers to build a market from
| there is a first step. If fake farmers can sell subsidized meat
| for a lower price, the real farmers suffer for it.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > The official is that something must be returned to nature
| before climate change destroys everything.
|
| Nature is an abstraction, not a weird angry god. We need to
| capture GHG and stop emitting more but that's pretty much it.
| That will most likely involve reforestation as it's a good
| carbon sink but using the expression "returning thing to
| nature" is not a correct way to frame it.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Because Denmark is almost entirely cities and farmland?
|
| There's already a housing crisis...
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| We pay farmers not to plant fields in the US. Here in the
| Eastern half, much of this farm land setting idle receives
| adequate rain and sunshine. Farmers have to mow (brush hog) the
| fields every year or two to prevent trees and brush from
| naturally taking over. Economically it makes little sense.
|
| Where this might actually make sense is around waterways to
| prevent erosion. And farmers have taken down a large percentage
| of the tree rows between fields that were planted in the dust
| bowl days in an effort to use every inch of their field.
|
| Although, I am personally in favor of simple regulations
| instead cash handouts.
| tim333 wrote:
| I presume the EU has an excess. A lot of land is 'set aside'
| where you get an EU subsidy for not farming it so we don't end
| up with too much food.
| rvense wrote:
| Because there's nothing else? 60% of Denmark is farmed land,
| most of the rest is cities, industry, or suburbs.
| casey2 wrote:
| There is no way it's cost effective to produce food in Denmark.
| If people were rational about this Denmark would be 0-5%
| farmland. But racism/nationalism and irrational fears and
| entrenched political power exists so these sane changes only
| happen slowly. This is a country whose largest imports are
| (fish, animal feed, wine and cheese) and mostly from other
| European countries. If they were really worried about min-
| maxing they would be trading with other countries. They seem to
| be more preoccupied with keeping cash inside Europe and
| confusing old world status symbols with wealth.
|
| It's as if your economic planning is based own how good it
| appears to a potential time traveler from 100 years ago
|
| "The people work 30 hours a week and eat wine and cheese
| whenever they want! Everybody is rich!"
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not all farm land is productive, so converting it back to
| forests and uncultivated land is better overall for the
| country.
| smackay wrote:
| 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.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Southern 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.
| skrause wrote:
| Food security is not an issue at all. For example in Germany
| around 20% of all farmland is used for "energy plants" (biogas
| etc.). Even in Germany solar planels have around a 28 times
| higher efficiency per area than biogas plants, so there is a
| lot of potential to repurpose farm land without changing food
| production at all.
| standardUser wrote:
| Is there a reason you and some many commenters here are
| concerned about food security? Has this became a nativist
| rallying cry of some sort? Because by all fact-based accounts
| there is no problem with food production in Europe.
| jopsen wrote:
| And if food security became an issue we could reverse
| policies.
|
| This won't be implemented overnight.
|
| We could also just make less bio fuel, or eat more plants
| less animals, etc.
|
| Lots of options, sure we need some food security, but there
| are limits to how much overproduction we need.
| ggernov wrote:
| This is ghoulish - farmland should directly be benefit the
| endemic population as much as possible! That's what it's there
| for!
|
| I love green tech like solar etc, made my home even more
| efficient etc but we need fresh food to LIVE!
| kawsper wrote:
| Denmark exports a lot of the produced food, and we are one of
| the most intensely farmed countries in the world, 60.4% of
| Denmark consists of fields, and 48% of Denmark's land area is
| used to grow food for animals, animals which are primarily
| pigs.
|
| We also yearly import 1.8 million tons of soy from South
| America to feed said pigs, because we can't grow enough food
| for them ourselves.
|
| It would be nice to have some nature to walk in, it's something
| I miss here and something there's a lot of in England, and it's
| great combined with their public footpath system!
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Planting orchards would seem an interesting compromise
| JacobJeppesen wrote:
| 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 conversion of
| peatlands will help, but the major change here is the
| introduction of a carbon tax for the entire agricultural
| industry. And to end confusion regarding other emissions than
| CO2, it's actually a CO2-equivalent (CO2e) tax, which includes a
| range of other gasses. E.g., 1kg of methane is 25kg CO2e.
|
| If you'd like to read more, see the two PDF documents below,
| which are the main official documents. They're in Danish, but
| upload them to Claude or ChatGPT, and you'll have a much better
| source of information if you'd like to know more about the
| specifics and how the actual implementation is planned.
|
| [1] https://www.regeringen.dk/media/13261/aftale-om-et-groent-
| da...
|
| [2]
| https://mgtp.dk/media/iinpdy3w/aftale_om_implementering_af_e...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > it's actually a CO2-equivalent (CO2e) tax, which includes a
| range of other gasses. E.g., 1kg of methane is 25kg CO2e
|
| Your pig farmers must be thrilled.
| logtrees wrote:
| Tree logging is one of my favorite new jobs that will exist in
| the future.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Incidentally this is one of the approaches described in Kim
| Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, a novel on climate change
| (more about the political ramifications of it than the ecological
| impacts). Interesting read.
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