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It 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 t

It 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 ago
Most 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 ago
  Yes! 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 ago
    I was under the impression cattle require a lot of water, is that incorrect?
    - AngryData 8y ago
      They drink a decent bit, but most of the calculated water usage comes from the water used to grow alfalfa and feed.
    - jethro_tell 8y ago
      A 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.
mrep 8y ago
But don't those trees eventually die and release that carbon back into the atmosphere?
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  The whole forest doesn't die at once, the dead trees' biomass doesn't all break down at once, and said biomass largely gets incorporated into new seedlings that spring up in the now-open space.
  - mrep 8y ago
    Yeah, but they continually die in a cycle such that the overall CO2 levels never really get stored long term as it is all temporarily stored in the trees.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Yes, but putting a forest where there wasn't a forest increases the amount of stored CO2. It just doesn't keep increasing once the forest is mature.
      - njarboe 8y ago
        Many species of trees in most forests can live for over a thousand years. So reaching "mature" could take that long. I imagine the stored carbon level keeps rising till then. The amount of carbon sequestered in a forest full of 4 meter diameter fir trees 75 meters tall is huge. In a mature giant sequoia forest one even has huge dead trees not rotting away for millennia.
        ceejayoz 8y ago
        If you're looking to sequester carbon, you'll probably want something fast growing - pine, bamboo. Bonus points if (as with pine and bamboo) it can be used for construction, which'll potentially lock it up even longer.
    - 8y ago
pathseeker 8y ago
>using up all our non-renewable water What are you talking about? Places in the midwest and eastern part of the west that get plenty of rainfall every year?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Sure, that's why huge aquifers are shrinking and causing subsidence. Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States.[5] The aquifer is at risk for over-extraction and pollution. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
  - Turing_Machine 8y ago
    > Today about 27% of the irrigated land "Irrigated land" is not the same as "farmed land". The vast majority of farming is done in places where irrigation is rare. About 53 million acres of farm land in the United States is irrigated, but there are about 257 million acres under cultivation.
pitaj 8y ago
Most grazing land was not cleared by people. It's just land that people graze their cattle on. Most of it is plains, and was never heavily forested. Also, when grass is eaten it absorbs much more carbon dioxide, so the grazing of the cattle is beneficial. Are you suggesting a better use of the land is for humans to plant a bunch of trees on it?
- GW150914 8y ago
  Unfortunately the methanogens in a cow’s gut mean that they’re an environmental disaster. I’ve read about seaweed being used to curb their, um, “output” yet unless thst comes into widespread use the state of affairs is grim. Grazing isn’t beneficial, it’s just a way to turn sequestered carbon into methane-belching cattle. Either we need to rapidly enact means to reduce those emissions with dietary additives, or we need to reduce the number of cattle. Here’s a look at carbon sequestration in ecosystems in the Western US: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1797/pdf/pp1797_Chapter1.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1797/pdf/pp1797_Chapter1.pdf You can see that sagebrush and other hardy species, while not trees fit for lumber, can do the job better than cows belching away. This paper focuses on the UK, but is still full of relevant info. http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/1438141 http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/1438141
  - Turing_Machine 8y ago
    > Unfortunately the methanogens in a cow’s gut mean that they’re an environmental disaster. The bison that lived there before had identical gut bacteria, and it doesn't seem to have caused an "environmental disaster". Why not?
    - knuththetruth 8y ago
      Because for most of their history, they weren’t accompanied by the massive carbon and methane emissions of their human counterparts’ industrialization? Seems self-evident.
    - rebuilder 8y ago
      Because there were much fewer bison than there now are cows, and because the atmosphere wasn't already being pumped full of CO2, methane etc. by humans.

cwingrav 8y ago

Most 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 ago
Yes! 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 ago
  I was under the impression cattle require a lot of water, is that incorrect?
  - AngryData 8y ago
    They drink a decent bit, but most of the calculated water usage comes from the water used to grow alfalfa and feed.
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    A 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.

mrep 8y ago

But don't those trees eventually die and release that carbon back into the atmosphere?

ceejayoz 8y ago
The whole forest doesn't die at once, the dead trees' biomass doesn't all break down at once, and said biomass largely gets incorporated into new seedlings that spring up in the now-open space.
- mrep 8y ago
  Yeah, but they continually die in a cycle such that the overall CO2 levels never really get stored long term as it is all temporarily stored in the trees.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Yes, but putting a forest where there wasn't a forest increases the amount of stored CO2. It just doesn't keep increasing once the forest is mature.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      Many species of trees in most forests can live for over a thousand years. So reaching "mature" could take that long. I imagine the stored carbon level keeps rising till then. The amount of carbon sequestered in a forest full of 4 meter diameter fir trees 75 meters tall is huge. In a mature giant sequoia forest one even has huge dead trees not rotting away for millennia.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        If you're looking to sequester carbon, you'll probably want something fast growing - pine, bamboo. Bonus points if (as with pine and bamboo) it can be used for construction, which'll potentially lock it up even longer.
  - 8y ago

pathseeker 8y ago

>using up all our non-renewable water What are you talking about? Places in the midwest and eastern part of the west that get plenty of rainfall every year?

DoreenMichele 8y ago
Sure, that's why huge aquifers are shrinking and causing subsidence. Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States.[5] The aquifer is at risk for over-extraction and pollution. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.[6] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  > Today about 27% of the irrigated land "Irrigated land" is not the same as "farmed land". The vast majority of farming is done in places where irrigation is rare. About 53 million acres of farm land in the United States is irrigated, but there are about 257 million acres under cultivation.

pitaj 8y ago

Most grazing land was not cleared by people. It's just land that people graze their cattle on. Most of it is plains, and was never heavily forested. Also, when grass is eaten it absorbs much more carbon dioxide, so the grazing of the cattle is beneficial. Are you suggesting a better use of the land is for humans to plant a bunch of trees on it?

GW150914 8y ago
Unfortunately the methanogens in a cow’s gut mean that they’re an environmental disaster. I’ve read about seaweed being used to curb their, um, “output” yet unless thst comes into widespread use the state of affairs is grim. Grazing isn’t beneficial, it’s just a way to turn sequestered carbon into methane-belching cattle. Either we need to rapidly enact means to reduce those emissions with dietary additives, or we need to reduce the number of cattle. Here’s a look at carbon sequestration in ecosystems in the Western US: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1797/pdf/pp1797_Chapter1.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1797/pdf/pp1797_Chapter1.pdf You can see that sagebrush and other hardy species, while not trees fit for lumber, can do the job better than cows belching away. This paper focuses on the UK, but is still full of relevant info. http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/1438141 http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/1438141
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  > Unfortunately the methanogens in a cow’s gut mean that they’re an environmental disaster. The bison that lived there before had identical gut bacteria, and it doesn't seem to have caused an "environmental disaster". Why not?
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    Because for most of their history, they weren’t accompanied by the massive carbon and methane emissions of their human counterparts’ industrialization? Seems self-evident.
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    Because there were much fewer bison than there now are cows, and because the atmosphere wasn't already being pumped full of CO2, methane etc. by humans.