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How America Uses Its Land
- uptown 8y agoThe portion of the country owned by Weyerhaeuser, shown in the map at the bottom of the article, is astounding. According to Wikipedia they own or control nearly 12.4 million acres of timberlands in the U.S. and manage an additional 14.0 million acres timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada.
- torpfactory 8y agoThat graphic at the end is a great way to explain how much area is used for our meat eating habit. Think of all the land which is not being used for... anything else. We are truly ecologically privileged to be able to create such a huge impact in order to eat meat. Incredible.
- gweinberg 8y agoA lot less impressive when you recognize most grazing land isn't much good for anything else.
- Karrot_Kream 8y agoIs it not good for housing?
- fipple 8y agoNot really, because it’s not near any jobs.
- CorpOverreach 8y agoIsn't that a bit of a catch-22 though? It's not near any jobs because... there's no one out there. Why would you start a business there?
- mandelbrotwurst 8y agoChicken or the egg, eh?
- maxerickson 8y agoChicken, egg, resource or harbor.
- fipple 8y agoThere are no jobs out there because it’s not a good place to urbanize. Settlement usually requires some combination of natural resources, navigable waterways, fresh water, protection from weather, protection from attack, or other inherent traits. The cattle grazing land in the middle of the country doesn’t have any of these.
- gweinberg 8y agoThere's a bunch of grazing land in the bay area. It tends to be really hilly. Not hilly like where we live, but seriously hilly. Besides, we need the open space. Can't have houses everywhere, this isn't LA.
- jschwartzi 8y agoYou could put all the factories and jobs you want out there and I still wouldn't have anything to do with the tract home nightmare that would create.
- Alex3917 8y agoIt would be great for sequestering carbon dioxide (in the form of trees), which is really what most of it probably should be used for. Instead we're depleting the topsoil, using up all our non-renewable water, and poisoning the oceans. All for basically no reason.
- cwingrav 8y agoMost of that land out West is too dry for many trees. There are some really interesting experiments for improving scrub plant growth using wavy rollers (water collects at bottom of rippled soil), but the fuel to plow that much land would probably do more harm than good.
- jay-anderson 8y agoYes! I think a lot of people miss the water part. The land will not grow a lot of the plants we eat or large trees without irrigation. However cows and other animals can eat the scrub that grows there naturally so it makes some sense to raise cattle in these areas. It'd be interesting to see that pasture range broken out a bit more (feed lots, open grazing land, etc.). That said, I'm all for lowering our overall meat consumption. The amount of land for cattle and land for food for cattle is huge.
- tspike 8y agoI was under the impression cattle require a lot of water, is that incorrect?
- AngryData 8y agoThey drink a decent bit, but most of the calculated water usage comes from the water used to grow alfalfa and feed.
- jethro_tell 8y agoA grazing beef cow will drink about 7-10 gallons during the day. If it is hot, they will drink 25. Wheat yields around 1LB for 130 -150 gallons over the growing season. An avocado (1lb) requires about 90 Gallons over the growing season. There are a lot of things to factor into this, crop yields aren't static and there are a lot of other things that can change the yields. Cows have legs, so you don't have to 'irrigate' them, they just have to be pastured within a couple thousand feet of water, and you can set up temporary solar pump + water trough if you have water within a couple miles. Beef Cattle will give you 5-600 lbs of meat at about 1200 Calories per pound, with an average grazing time of 12 months. works out to 150cal/gallon. Avocado has about 700+ cal per pound so about 8cal/gallon. (I'm not as sure on this, it could be lower as a 'medium' avocado is about 1/3 of a pound, but I've never grown avocados so I don't know the exact here.) Calories in a whole grain wheat is about 1500/lb, so 1500/150 is about 10cal/gallon. So it's kinda relative, but the only way you're going to harvest edible nutrients from scrub land is buy herding or hunting grazing animals that process the stuff with 4 stomachs. There's a larger question of the value that grazing provides and if we need that as a food source. Before modern farming and shipping, if you lived in a semi-arid scrubland style climate, you were very much dependent on some type of animal to turn that stuff into a digestible food source for you.
- torpfactory 8y agoIt is a pretty significant diversion of land from a natural state though. Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Think of it like: how many acres have been changed from a natural ecosystem to an artificial one for meat eating.
- pathseeker 8y ago>Cattle grazing, thought it isn’t an ecological disaster like dam building, is quite different than leaving the land untouched. Leaving the land untouched is even more 'ecologically privileged' than using it to make expensive food. >Plus, a good portion of the country’s good farmland is diverted to growing feed for those animals. Growing feed (hay/grass) is much easier than growing things like almonds. If a farmer could grow something humans would pay for directly rather than hay, they would.
- jdietrich 8y agoGiven the colossal and uneven levels of subsidies in US agriculture, I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions about what the market is willing to bear.
- Fjolsvith 8y agoThe farmers here in Kansas are crying because the subsidies are being cut right and left. It's going to shake up the agricultural market big time. Plus, all the grain storage facilities are still mostly full from last year and we're looking towards another bumper crop from all the rainfall this year.
- adventured 8y agoUS agriculture subsidies are not colossal in fact. They're about $20-$25 billion per year. They shouldn't exist at all ideally, however given the immense size of the US agriculture market, and how critical it is to keeping hundreds of millions of people alive, it's hardly a concerning sum. By contrast, EU farm subsidies in a smaller economy are three times that size. If the US farm subsidies are colossal, I'm not sure what you'd call 3x colossal.
- megaman22 8y agoGo look at the land that's being used as open range pasture out west. If it was not being used for grazing cattle, it would not be used for anything anyway. Most of it was buffalo country two hundred years ago, so it's not like it's really changed.
- GW150914 8y agoBack in “the day” 20 to 30 million bison roamed the US. Today there are more than 94 million cattle in the US, and that’s actually down from a peak of 130+ million in the mid seventies. A lot has changed! Those bison were also wild, lived much much longer lives than farmed cattle which spend part of their lives in feed lots. The bison were also part of the broader ecosystem, hunted by wolves, and in general a net negative emitter. The modern cow is not, especially when time on feed lots and eventual transportation pre-post slaughter are factored in. Modern cattle are after all, part of an industry which pollutes in addition to the cows themselves, while bison just lived and died on the plains.
- AngryData 8y agoYou should also factor in the fact that the average buffalo are bigger than the average cow. Buffalo are around the size of a holstein cow, the most common dairy cow, but most of the meat cattle we raise are near half the size/weight of them.
- gweinberg 8y agoYeah, the chart gives the impression that land is land, and we just decide how to use it. But there are good reasons land is used the way it is. Farmland in the midwest is really really flat, with thick rich soil. A lot of forest land is pretty steeply sloped, with not so much soil. And so on.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoIn other words: even if mushrooms grow on it, land is not fungible.
- pokemongoaway 8y agoSo you think we should be able to pack in more humans, and have then eat soy? There are other models, like Joel Salatin's farming techniques, to provide sustainable and healthy animal products.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThere are tens of millions of bison that would be grazing that land had they not been wiped out.
- autokad 8y agoas others pointed out, it cant be really used for anything else. I'll also add to that, look how much of the rocky mountains was listed as 'pasture / range'
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tcbawo 8y agoHow about a private company (Weyerhaeuser) owning 12.4 million acres of timberlands. It's about twice the size of Maryland!
- megaman22 8y agoThat's a result of them buying Plum Creek. Also the decline of the paper industry making the kind of vertical integration that Boise and Meade and International Paper and others formerly engaged in less useful.
- jobu 8y agoGrowing timber like Weyerhaeuser does should probably be counted as cropland. They grow mono-culture trees the same way most farmers grow corn, but instead of harvesting every year it's every couple decades. The very last line is what bothers me the most: "since 2008 the amount of land owned by the 100 largest private landowners has grown from 28 million acres to 40 million, an area larger than the state of Florida." That much land-wealth locked up by a handful of individuals seems like yet another knock against economic mobility. At one time people feared that sort of wealth concentration could mean a return of the aristocracy and was slowed somewhat through estate taxes.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoComparing their ownership to a state sounds like a lot, until you realize that Maryland is 12,400 square miles and that 12.4 million acres is really only 19,400 square miles (if my math is correct). Just a reminder that Alaska is 665,384 square miles by itself. So put in those terms, over the entire land mass of the US, Weyerhaeuser doesn't look so out of balance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- partycoder 8y ago56 million acres are Indian reservations and should probably be marked as such.
- ajross 8y agoReservations are a political boundary, this is a map of land use. You'd have a fair argument that the state boundaries shown on that map should reflect the reservations too, but not that the color key should include the nature of the local government.
- hirundo 8y ago> More than one-third of U.S. land is used for pasture ... There’s a single, major occupant on all this land: cows. Not here. I live on cow range land, but the cattle are outnumbered by elk. The elk hunting industry here is larger than the cattle industry. Every third local seems to be a hunting guide, and many of those are cow growers too. This seems to me to be a very positive thing that should be encouraged. Instead of buying all their meat at the local supermarket meat counter thousands of city dwellers dream of the hunt. They buy expensive equipment and tags then come out here and work their asses off for a chance. Why would anyone spend that much and work that hard for an uncertain outcome unless it was fulfilling in some way? It sure doesn't save money on meat. Hunting forces you to commune with nature, dressing and hauling out your kill rubs your nose in it. It forces you to own responsibility for killing your dinner. Paying the blood price carries meaning that paying $/lb for a BOGO does not. If we can arrange for more people to harvest their own meat rather than accepting an industrial commodity, more people would have a greater love and understanding of nature, more respect for themselves, and more meaning in their lives. In many places it's a superior use of the range.
- jmspring 8y agoI live in a rural community where within the county and neighboring counties, cattle is a big deal. That said, the cows up here are fat and happy and have space to roam. Compare to the cattle pastures in the central valley where the cows are skinny and kept in small areas with limited space to roam. One thing that surprised me moving up here, and this is something I didn't realize re: laws around food, availabiliyt of game meat (dear/elk/etc) really is something you have to hunt on your own. Another interesting tidbit about cattle grazing and national parks - If you ever do the Mohave Road, there used to be a number of ranches that grazed in/along parts of that route. Old water troughs visible, etc. Most of them shut down, one of the few that was allowed to continue had connections to Diane Feinstein and her husband. Water, grazing rights, and land use politics can get pretty damn ugly out west.
- DareRight 8y agoJust ask the Bundy's
- mc32 8y agoIf urban (built-up) areas have quadrupled since the 50's, I don't think that pace can continue unabated. Population has roughly doubled since then. It would seem the trend would require denser cities and suburbs, which should not be too difficult given that most metro areas are relatively low density.
- jdietrich 8y agoThe United States has a population density of 86 people per square mile. In Britain it's 704, in the Netherlands it's 1075 and in Singapore it's 20,192. You've got plenty of room. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
- mc32 8y agoIt just seems wasteful if we were to use more than 5% of all land, much of which is "badlands" and marginal lands. True arable land, which is where our sustenance comes from is much less at around 16% currently.
- AngryData 8y agoWhile im sure they don't utilize all of their available farm land, it is worth mentioning that Britain imports almost 30% of their food, which means they are at or near the limit of sustainably feeding themselves, and even then almost 60% of the world's crop yield is the direct result of fossil fuel derived fertilizer, which we are going to have to give up soon if we don't all want to be cooked alive, which will increase the energy costs of fertilizer production 10 fold. The US would be hard pressed to find similar external sources of food if their population density rose significantly higher. Especially on top of all the desert and arid grassland areas that are pretty poor for farming.
- almostApatriot1 8y agointeresting article but i couldn't get the entire map to fit on my (13 inch) screen no matter how I adjusted the browser. Very annoying.
- alienreborn 8y agoWhoa, America has lot of golf courses!
- rayiner 8y agoThe one third being used for cows is misleading. Pasture is basically the Bureau of Land Management’s default use for the vast swaths of federal land. It’s like “here is this land, you’re allowed to graze on it with a permit.” That doesn’t produce that many cows—it’s more about politics and the fact that much of the land is good for little else besides growing grass. The real land use from growing meat comes from the land used to grow the corn that feeds the cows. In the article, that’s counted as agricultural land, not pasture.
- wavefunction 8y ago>much of the land is good for little else besides growing grass. From an agricultural standpoint perhaps.
- craftyguy 8y agoYea, clearly gp has never ventured out into some of this. There are gems here for hiking/backpacking, and preserving wildlife/watersheds, and much more than just feeding cows.
- davidw 8y agoYes, but some of it... it's really just like this: https://goo.gl/maps/rQjoQWY9Svu https://goo.gl/maps/rQjoQWY9Svu It doesn't support many cattle, but that's about all you can do with it, and there are better places for 'outdoor activities'. Cattle do need to be managed so as to allow the native species (sage grouse for instance) to thrive.
- jaggederest 8y agoI'm pretty sure the Oregon high desert is really good at being high desert. Does the Mojave have to be useful to humans to be a valuable thing?
- PakG1 8y ago
- deepsun 8y ago> According to The Land Report magazine, since 2008 the amount of land owned by the 100 largest private landowners has grown from 28 million acres to 40 million, an area larger than the state of Florida. Wow, it's almost 50% increase in just 10 years.
- redahs 8y agoInequality in land ownership has been continuously increasing in the United States since the 1930s. Higher property tax rates on land ownership are needed to reverse it, as well as the elimination of property tax exemptions which the owners of non-profits, private forests, golf courses, etc are currently receiving.
- tomcam 8y agoWait, if you want people on the lower end of the economic scale to own land, why would you want to punish them with higher property taxes?
- Sabinus 8y agoLarger areas of land with high value are taxed more. Low socioeconomic people don't put mansions on large estates.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoScrew that. I know people who have to keep working in their retirement because of their property taxes. If you're gonna tax land it should be proportional to how developed that land is. You shouldn't be taxed off of your land because you bought it 40yr ago before it was valuable.
- CPUstring 8y agoGood question. It should be a progressive tax
- zip1234 8y ago
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- vertexFarm 8y agoHuh. When you look at the graphics which concentrate all the urbanized land on the northeast coast, it looks like our total urban area is close to the size of Mega-City One. Cool.
- austinshea 8y agoThis really looks like what theoutline.com does now. I can’t imagine bloomberg.com would be creating this sort of web experience without whatever Topolsky did while he was there.
- garyclarke27 8y agoExcellent well presented interesting analytical article. No surprise (but still remarkable) that Americans use more land for Golf than growing vegetables. Tragic though the insane amount of land used to grow biofuel, must be one of the most idiotic decisions ever made by politicians, cow towing to the anti (life giving) CO2 cult.
- vfc1 8y agoLooking at that map, Between livestock pasture, feed and feed export it accounts for around 45% of the US. Food that we eat is only a small fraction. Isn’t this a huge waste of resources, and completely unsustainable? If we ate the produce directly instead of feeding it to cows and eating them, how many people could we feed? What about the gigantic consumption of water this implies? The link between this to global warming and climate change is undeniable.
- megaman22 8y agoYou're comparing alfalfa and oranges. You're not going to grow wheat on pastureland that can support sheep or cattle. Much less other vegetables. You're also making the assumption that agricultural land is a resource that needs conservation, when there is a massive surplus of it. We've allowed huge tracts to revert to forest on the east coast.
- dodgemustang 8y agoI'm sure I'm misunderstanding you but... How is conservation of agricultural land not important? I mean, isn't not being good stewards of the land what gave us the dust bowl?
- megaman22 8y agoConservation isn't the best word there. Maybe optimization is better. It's not scarce, we don't need to agonize over calorie outputs per acre. And if you're going to do that, you don't want to be intensively farming most of this cattle country - there's one of the reasons for the dust bowl.
- dodgemustang 8y agoAh okay, that makes more sense. Thanks.
- smohare 8y agoFrom a resource perspective there is no surplus, due to opportunity costs in land conversion. Mid-term prospects for meeting global food demand boil down to increasing production yields. (Sure, distant technology will probably change this a bit). http://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/the-future-prospects-for-global-arable-land/ http://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/the-future-pr...
- Avalaxy 8y ago* Here's How The United States Uses Its Land
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nautilus12 8y agoI find the scroll UI for this really annoying. It gets stuck on the bottom of my screen until the last image.
- aceInTheHole 8y agoWhat a load of horeshit. Why do people buy such bullshit peddled by Forbes, Bloomberg, and other pseudo economists pretending to be knowledgeable. The methods by which America uses its land is irrelevant as long as OPEC prices and sells oil in dollars. Everyone has to sell us their stuff to get dollars to buy their oil. That means the American market is an illusion - we can always leverage the petrodollar to get whatever we want. We could practically put everyone on welfare tomorrow and we would still be fine as long as our military is stationed across the world. The only reason the government encourages everyone to work is because it would have a riot on its hands otherwise.
- zhonwang 8y agoeh lolwut
- bensonn 8y ago"With so much of the U.S. population in urban areas, it’s little surprise that these areas contribute an outsize amount to the economy. The 10 most productive metropolitan areas alone contributed to about 40 percent of U.S. GDP in 2016." I always find facts like this misleading, not purposefully so but misleading all the same. Take a semi-random example, PepsiCO. HQ in NY, Incorporated in NC, 250k + employees, 60B+ revenue. This is a huge company with many brands and global sales. They are stocked and sold all over the world with factories, distribution centers, sales centers, etc all over the place. Does the NY metropolitan area claim all 60B in productivity? Weyerhauser is another interesting company. For 100 years they were based on of Federal Way and only recently moved to Seattle (probably same metro area anyway). Obviously their bread and butter, timber, is not grown, harvested or converted into product in the metro area. The CEO lives in Seattle but the thousands of lumberjacks and mill workers are not in urban areas. The employees that "do the work" are not in urban areas. That last sentence isn't meant to be inflamatory but it was the best wording I could think of. Some companies, maybe Facebook, do generate the vast majority from the HQ in an urban area. It is beyond my skills to figure it out but I think an equally cool map/graph/infographic (I do think this is cool, just a small nitpick here) would be to break down how and where companies actually generate their revenue. Another possibility- I don't know what I am talking about and these stats already take this into account.
- influnza 8y agoI really enjoyed this page's UI on a mobile device.