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

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-forest-trees-fertilizer-e55416347fcc385a3ea8e2415726f908

by geox • 2 years ago

667 428 2 years ago

dataflow2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Yes, some of the forests will be untouched nature but a good chunk of it will be for timber production.

dataflow2• 2 years ago

Awesome, thanks!

sidcool• 2 years ago

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

ggm• 2 years ago

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.

notRobot3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

AuryGlenz2• 2 years ago

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.

simonask7• 2 years ago

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.

notRobot3• 2 years ago

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

zo1• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Plastic pollution in the oceans has nothing to do with climate change.

aziaziazi2• 2 years ago

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.

simonask7• 2 years ago

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.

jeroenhd• 2 years ago

If you burn the wood, sure. Forests only capture carbon if you leave that carbon alone forever.

Denmark isn't just trying to reduce their CO2 footprint, though. It's also dealing with terrible soil and water quality, both the result of many years of hyper-intensive farming. That's a local problem that needs local policy to solve.

inglor_cz• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Just open google maps and take a stroll across europe...

dachris• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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...

cpursley4• 2 years ago

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.

simonask7• 2 years ago

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.

perrygeo• 2 years ago

We have to be careful here. While that's good news locally, the news is less promising globally. Deforestation is still rampant in the global south - specifically to make agricultural products for the global north. So Europe and America are still net-deforesters if you take into account their imported products.

TheChaplain• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

(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.

microtonal• 2 years ago

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).

Tade02• 2 years ago

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)

postepowanieadm2• 2 years ago

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)

jopsen3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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?

exe343• 2 years ago

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

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 2 years ago

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.

12907835202• 2 years ago

Have past instances of 2.1 fertility also had increased lifespan and immigration?

Sabinus2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Believe me the farmers have been doing their best to buck this.

WorkerBee28474• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

cpursley4• 2 years ago

Feeding people is a sacred task. Food is literally the base pillar of various human needs pyramids.

123yawaworht456• 2 years ago

shitlibs' contempt for farmers of all people is a real mask off moment

Sabinus2• 2 years ago

Farmers can get extremely attached to one piece of land and one farming method and any attempts to shift the incentives in the system and make some types of farming or locations move on is portrayed as a systemic attack on farming and the end of the world.

Everyone appreciates the farmers, some farmers just don't seem to appreciate the harms certain types of farming put on everyone else and the ecosystem, and they'll hide behind how essential calories are to protect their interests.

You're aware the farming lobby is one of the strongest in many countries right? They're not under-served politically. Farming is one of the most subsidized industries.

danlugo925• 2 years ago

Making it harder to grow your own food /is/ subjugating.

pkulak2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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

pkulak2• 2 years ago

That’s not planting a tree.

ksec• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Where else would you like them to plant trees? Tearing up residential areas to convert to forest would be massively expensive and likely unpopular.

cpursley4• 2 years ago

Places that used to be forested and are not productive farmland. There’s lots of places like this, just maybe not in Denmark.

jillesvangurp• 2 years ago

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.

timc3• 2 years ago

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

chickenbig2• 2 years ago

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).

awjlogan2• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

Galaxeblaffer4• 2 years ago

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.

chipdart5• 2 years ago

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.

bondarchuk• 2 years ago

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.

pnw• 2 years ago

What's your source for 4.3% of exports? This source says 22%.

https://agricultureandfood.dk/media/m1qfuuju/lf-facts-and-fi...

apexalpha• 2 years ago

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.

dataviz10002• 2 years ago

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

eesmith2• 2 years ago

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."

bufferoverflow2• 2 years ago

I don't see how Haiti situation applies to Denmark.

JoshGG• 2 years ago

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 ?

asdff5• 2 years ago

Scuba diving really? You’d think cruise ships and a large airport would be a lot more significant.

gklitz4• 2 years ago

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_8• 2 years ago

In New Zealand the believe that if they removed farm subsidizes, their farmers would quite. Now they are a massive farm product exporter.

0xy• 2 years ago

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?

chipdart5• 2 years ago

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.

phil21• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

simonask7• 2 years ago

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.

7952• 2 years ago

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.

postepowanieadm2• 2 years ago

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...

RandomThoughts33• 2 years ago

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.

emptysongglass2• 2 years ago

Denmark did get rid of its forests a long time ago, after World War I. Germany has vast forests, a magnitude larger than those in Denmark, a country which is almost entirely farmland outside the cities. You have no idea what you're talking about.

pvaldes3• 2 years ago

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.

RandomThoughts33• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Because Denmark is almost entirely cities and farmland?

There’s already a housing crisis…

sunflowerfly• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Because there's nothing else? 60% of Denmark is farmed land, most of the rest is cities, industry, or suburbs.

casey2• 2 years ago

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!"

CPLX• 2 years ago

This is a very strange statement. Being able to produce the food needed for your own survival is about the most core national security issue there is.

And having people living healthy, well-fed, lives of leisure seems like a pretty good definition of rich to me. What’s the better one?

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

Not all farm land is productive, so converting it back to forests and uncultivated land is better overall for the country.

wiseowise• 2 years ago

Rage mode over more forest? Are you a psycho?

Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it.

And both are tiny and being swarmed by sustainability issues.

emptysongglass2• 2 years ago

Denmark drained the only source of natural diversity it had, its marshlands, after World War I and turned the entire country into farmland. Outside the cities, it is endless fields of farmland. And now its chickens have come home to roost, having poisoned the soil and rivers. This is entirely Denmark's fault, and now they're trying to reverse some of the damage they did.

jopsen3• 2 years ago

why Farmland?

Because trees don't grow well in the ocean? :)

There is developed areas (cities/towns/industry) and farm land.

Most of the land not suitable for farming was turned into farm land. Through extremely hard work over the past 150 years. Like straightening rivers, draining marshes, and planting up the heath.

blitzar5• 2 years ago

Farmland is not some natural balanced healthy state for the land to exist in.

jillyboel2• 2 years ago

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

smackay• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

logicchains• 2 years ago

there is a lot of potential to repurpose farm land without changing food production at all

This takes years, which isn't enough in the case of a major food security event, i.e. war.

standardUser2• 2 years ago

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.

jopsen3• 2 years ago

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.

nradov3• 2 years ago

There have been many famines in Europe throughout the past few centuries. Perhaps we're now at the end of history and nothing like that will ever happen again but since countries aren't willing to take that bet.

ggernov• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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!

doommius• 2 years ago

Yup, and to add to this, the large majority of this meat is produced for export, and it's sold super cheap, I personally believe a good way of solving this is only giving EU support to non export farming, eg if you receive EU subsidy the good shouldn't be allowed to be exported, or those taxes would have to be repaid.

As currently we're destroying the nature, and waters due to this extremely intensive farming and as others have mentioned Denmark is producing 200-300 % of our domestic need + it requires significant import from south America where it wouldn't surprise me if this import lead to significant deforestation.

I know China is also working on increasing their domestic production[1] which is one of the primary markets that Denmark is exporting a lot to , It was 85000 tons last year[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/business/china-pork-farms... [2]https://effektivtlandbrug.landbrugnet.dk/artikler/marked/103...

fifticon5• 2 years ago

this is about farmland that should never have ben cultivated to begin with, it was a temporary emergency practice from WW2 that lobbyists kept alive after the war.

trebligdivad• 2 years ago

Planting orchards would seem an interesting compromise

JacobJeppesen5• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

dgfitz• 2 years ago

I had to look it up, Denmark is allegedly a world leader in pig farming exports. You make a really interesting point that I feel like garners more discourse.

https://agricultureandfood.dk/danish-agriculture/agriculture....

tcfhgj• 2 years ago

Thought cows are methane intensive

JacobJeppesen5• 2 years ago

It comes with quite a lot of compensation and subsidies, so they're less angry than you might expect. Also, an important note here is that they were part of the negotiations, and as such were part of the agreement which was proposed to the parliament.

All that being said, you're right, they're not exactly thrilled with the government adding taxes and monitoring them more.

lofaszvanitt• 2 years ago

Give them seaweeds to lower their gas output.

manvillej3• 2 years ago

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 property rather than nature.

lovemenot• 2 years ago

It should be fine, I believe. Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output. So a shift from meat to other food crops would be a net win, even as it frees up land for other purposes.

Many farmers will receive a one-time payment on land sales and some will use this windfall to subsidise their transition from growing livestock to more environmentally-friendly food.

benmanns• 2 years ago

I think we should start doing more taxes combined with subsidies. Give everyone a $1/t carbon tax. Give everyone a ~$1/t farming subsidy based on current carbon production. Nobody loses, but everyone is incentivized to decrease carbon production and the faster ones profit more. Phase out the subsidy over X years if you like.

Otherwise, you’re right. We’re upsetting the balance of a very complex, very important system and causing a regressive tax in the form of price increases.

mmooss3• 2 years ago

Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions. Also, that subsidy distorts industry choices in favor of carbon.

The industry might be accustomed to profiting from the subsidy, but that doesn't make them entitled to it! And certainly the industry has had plenty of time to anticipate and adjust to the problems of carbon emissions.

Scoundreller• 2 years ago

It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins.

Will it or will farmland value take a dump but remain unchanged in use?

I always thought of farmland these days as a use of last resort and if it could be marketable for buildings, it’s already not economically worth it as a farm except speculatively

teekert• 2 years ago

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.)

space_oddity5• 2 years ago

It’s a bold move, but like you, I’m not sure the potential consequences have been fully addressed

BurningFrog2• 2 years ago

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.

space_oddity5• 2 years ago

It’s always better to go to the source to avoid misinterpretation

MaxHoppersGhost• 2 years ago

So effectively offshoring carbon production to places that don’t care?

delusional• 2 years ago

No. The document spells out that denmark intends to remain a "strong" producer of agricultural products by increasing the yield from other, less ecologically damaging, farming areas.

You should read the introduction.

drcwpl• 2 years ago

Thank you for the links and clarification, it makes more sense now

cynicalsecurity• 2 years ago

introduction of a carbon tax for the entire agricultural industry

Polish farmers are going to eat you alive for this.

sinuhe69• 2 years ago

"They're in Danish, but upload them to Claude or ChatGPT, and you'll have a much better source"

Eh, people don't know that Google Translate can translate documents (PDF, Doc etc.) as well?!

xhkkffbf• 2 years ago

Confusion? I skimmed the headline and saw that they were planting "eighteen" trees. We need better fonts.

logtrees2• 2 years ago

Tree logging is one of my favorite new jobs that will exist in the future.

jojobas• 2 years ago

There are already tree harvesters that start with a standing tree and end on a ready log with waste mulched. It's only a matter of time it's AI controlled.

The future has no jobs.

logtrees2• 2 years ago

Oh yeah that far into the future is singularity so at that point, what we're all doing is just interfacing with the AI. :) But I think that's still a while away, most likely? Or who knows, maybe sooner lol.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

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.

thinkingtoilet2• 2 years ago

Before anyone jumps into this book I would caution against it. This book had many very cool ideas and moments. The way it played out felt very "real". However, in the end there was very little actual story and was very boring at times. I actively dislike Neal Stephenson but if you want a near-future climate story I would recommend Termination Shock over Ministry For The Future. Just a random internet person's two cents.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

I agree it doesn't have much of a story. It reads much more like a non-fictional recounting of events, but provides a lot of food for thought about how things might unfold. Just don't approach it like your typical novel.

photonthug• 2 years ago

Since we’re here.. These are probably everyone’s top 2 eco-punk novels but the rest of an appropriate top 10 list is way more contentious, and imho sources like goodreads or whatever will always have many items that aren’t really even in the genre.

So I’ll offer the “metatropolis” anthology, which as a bonus has an audiobook version read by the Star Trek cast. Anyone got anything else?

RayVR5• 2 years ago

I also read KSR's book. It was interesting at times. However, the research on the financial topics, including the central banks and "global financiers" was quite bad.

I don't recall the glaring errors right now, however, given this is an area where I (at least once upon a time) was an expert, it was quite bad to read this and realize there are likely other serious errors in topics with which I am not at all familiar.

While this is of course a work of fiction, getting verifiable facts wrong, intentionally or not, ruins it for me.

silenced_trope• 2 years ago

I actively dislike Neal Stephenson

Why is that?

I really liked Snow Crash and Anathem. Reamde was okay. I don't remember much about Diamond Age or Cryptonomicon.

m4633• 2 years ago

I had trouble with the Mars series and never got through it.

I kind of wonder if it is easier for me to enjoy fiction that requires more "suspension of disbelief" with ftl or time travel, alien races and magic.

In comparison when I don't have to suspend any disbelief, we haven't met aliens, other worlds are actually too far to get to, and physics and science is unyielding... it is harder to enjoy myself.

flanked-evergl6• 2 years ago

Shifting production to less regulated countries like China is not going to fix climate change.

sentrysapper• 2 years ago

IIRC in Ministry for the Future it was 50% of all land was reserved. 10% is a good start though for conservation efforts.

insane_dreamer9• 2 years ago

It was 50% in places like Canada where they are already close to that figure, plus some parts in the Western US where to set up Migration corridors without mass relocations (mostly nearly abandoned rural hamlets where the young people had moved away anyway).

thecleaner• 2 years ago

How will it impact food supply ?

9front• 2 years ago

From https://cphpost.dk/2024-11-22/news/round-up/we-are-in-crisis...

"Danish Crown, one of Denmark’s largest Danish meat producer, is facing significant financial challenges as pig deliveries to its processing plants have dropped in the 2023/24 financial year."

titaniumtown2• 2 years ago

Meat is too cheap and resource intensive. A market correction has been incoming for decades.

jamil72• 2 years ago

Good.

martinsnow2• 2 years ago

What good is thousands losing their jobs?

mrweasel2• 2 years ago

On the other hand Tican is doing pretty well and are hiring, while Danish Crown is firing. So at least some of the pigs which would normally go to Danish Crown, is being sent to Tican instead. Tican is also giving farmers a better price per pig. https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/seneste/mens-danish-crown-lider-lo...

Danish Crowns problems aren't entirely due to external factors, part of it is also that Danish Crowns is struggling to run its business properly.

jacobgorm2• 2 years ago

Because the pigs get transported alive to Germany and Poland to get slaughtered, as wages are lower there. Denmark, with a population under six million, still produces 32 million pigs per annum.

throwuo• 2 years ago

America should learn from this

titaniumtown2• 2 years ago

This upcoming administration won't though.

nicman23• 2 years ago

i read 1B and my mind immediately went to llama. i have a problem

Refusing23• 2 years ago

It's not exactly true

the government will offer to buy the land from farmers etc.

but they can just say 'no'

batushka5• 2 years ago

And in case they choose "no", that carbon tax for farm animals help to think second time.

aziaziazi2• 2 years ago

In case they farm carbon intensive animals like cows, yes. For the pigs farmers no so much. However those pigs farms totally destroy Denmark fishing areas which traditionally feed the population.

flanked-evergl6• 2 years ago

Yeah, it's much better for farming to be moved to countries with less labour and environmental regulations.

iagooar• 2 years ago

Let me get this right. Farmers, who are already struggling to meet ends, will have to pay CO2 tax in order to produce FOOD that we all need to SURVIVE and not starve to death? What diabolical plan is that?

I am the a huge fan of forests and spend a lot of time in the woods, but man, more trees will not feed us.

edhelas• 2 years ago

A big percentage of the land usage are to grow crops to feed animals to feed us.

If we bring back our meat consumption (especially beef) to something more balanced for our health we can free-up a massive amount of surface.

I'm not saying that everyone should be vegetarian or vegan. I'm following the notes of the IPCC and studies that says that we can, and should, reduce some of our meat consumption and get those proteines from all the many other sources (peas, tofu...).

Beef is the coal of food. Lets progress to something more efficient, dense and good for our environment and our health.

jacobgorm2• 2 years ago

They are already massively subsidized and this will only increase their subsidies. In Denmark farmers control government similarly to the way big oil abd gunmakers control government in the US.

fifticon5• 2 years ago

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

space_oddity5• 2 years ago

Interesting historical perspective

brodouevencode• 2 years ago

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

fifticon5• 2 years ago

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

danlugo925• 2 years ago

Nah, these policies are aimed into increasing food imports (therefore decreasing food security btw), because it's easier for politicians to steal money with off-shore businesses.

And the farmers alao get shafted in the process, farmers are always totalitarian's first target. Venezuela, Rwanda, Zimbawe, Cuba.

space_oddity5• 2 years ago

The 43 billion kroner earmarked for land acquisition suggests serious commitment, but I wonder how this will impact small farmers and rural communities in the long run...

shafyy5• 2 years ago

I think a good chart to keep in mind about this discusion is this one: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore

Beef emits 49.89 kg CO2 eq. per 100 grams of protein. Tofu 1.98 kg.

PeterStuer• 2 years ago

Be paranoid of how they will define 'forest'. Over here they included e.g. a middle lane divider with a small sapling every 30 meters as counting as a full 'forest'.

incomingpain• 2 years ago

Most of europe agreed to do this. I eagerly hope all of the EU immediately follows through with these commitments.

Lucky denmark for being able to just be anti-farmer. France and other countries have to choose a major city to demolish to meet their commitments.

flanked-evergl6• 2 years ago

The west is engaging in managed decline and moving production to places with less regulation and much worse environmental and social impacts. Why? What sense does this make? You would rather have some Muslim slave in China make your stuff while poisoning the ocean than make it in Denmark?

guiriduro• 2 years ago

There are such a thing as tariffs. I think it makes sense that we both improve our local environment and adopt a carrot/stick approach to businesses in other localities that do/don't do the same. Same environmental standards with independent audit should grant (eco) tariff-free access. Likewise, wasteful environmentally destructive exporter = heavy tariff.

flanked-evergl6• 2 years ago

This is not how tariffs are being used and the actual reality is that manufacturing and production is being transferred to places with much worse environmental and labour practices that are also antagonistic to the west. Germany "greeniefied" their economy by just outsourcing energy production to Russia and in the processes ensured 10,000 of Ukranians had to die. This needs to stop. Nobody wins from it, everyone loses.

danlugo925• 2 years ago

Corruption and stealing is easier with off-shore business.

boredumb• 2 years ago

Climate obsessed people are probably in it for the right reasons but are hysterically annoying from any third party perspective. Keep telling people that cow burps are what is driving bad weather and you can keep being baffled that "deniers" hate any of the solutions you come up with there after. People hate pollution across the board, people hate theoretical models of climate effects based on research divorced from reality that predict weather in 30 years to be a doomsday scenario because of something so obviously mundane while ignoring outsourcing manufacturing to china and india to bus, boat and flight. At this rate we may one day in our lifetime be able to have all the pigs and cattle raised in china and fly them on business class to europe in order to fight the weather via carbon credits.

option2• 2 years ago

I am amazed by the idea (also popular among many in California) that one can “outsource” climate change to poor, developing countries by not producing for yourself

tayistay• 2 years ago

Google says: “California is the largest agricultural exporter in the United States”

option2• 2 years ago

California imports about 30% of its energy from other states. [1]

More importantly, most of the gas Californias consume is imported as well.

I guess its OK to drill and build coal electric plants as well as it is elsewhere. /s

[1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-much-energy-california-...

fuzztester• 2 years ago

Sort of related:

IIRC, I had read somewhere a while ago that Denmark was going to convert to fully organic farming.

So, just now, I googled for a relevant phrase and found this as one of the results:

https://ecobnb.com/blog/2017/07/denmark-organic/

This was the search I used:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Denmark+doing+fully+organic+...

woodpanel• 2 years ago

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

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

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

GrumpyNl• 2 years ago

I can not emphasize this enough, we need more and better trees.

jillyboel2• 2 years ago

What will the united states do? Keep shitting out CO2 with no regard to the climate?

xkbarkar• 2 years ago

The greyed out downvoted comments in this thread makes it look like that dreaded echo chamber that must not be named here.

HN threads are usually much better quality than this ( anyone with opposed ideas are downvoted to oblivion ).

Rubbish thread. Nothing to learn here.

Myrmornis• 2 years ago

What is the planned species composition? Are the plans aimed at restoring natural habitat, or are they primarily using trees as a means to some other end?

ungreased0675• 2 years ago

Will the forests be open to the public for hiking, fishing, hunting, etc?

K0balt• 2 years ago

Without my glasses and morning caffeine dose, I read that Denmark was going to plant 18 trees and convert 10percent of its farmland into forest. Not really knowing anything about Denmark, I briefly imagined that Denmark was either much, much smaller than I had originally supposed , or that it had very, very little agricultural density.

Sometimes these idiotic musings and the little chuckle I get internally are the brighter part of my morning. Even in fading vision there are things to appreciate.

silexia2• 2 years ago

Farmer here. Attacks on agriculture have historically lead to famines.

silexia2• 2 years ago

Coming soon...

"Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of citizens into healthy mulch.

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

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