3 ms·

> Almost half of the world's land surface is now farmland This is a BS statistic meant to shock and inappropriately counts the entire area of wilderness that m

• vkou 4y ago
  Managed crop monoculture, which ~half of farmland is - is not 'something similar' to natural forests, plains, grasslands, scrubland, etc. Even grazing land rarely looks anything like it does before we've shaped it for our use. And even when it does, at first glance, it gets a monoculture of animals, instead. Farmers are not keen on seeing their herds deal with competition or predation from the wild.
  • PeterisP 4y ago
    On the other hand, we have local biodiversity regulations which require certain land to be grazed and/or cut (as for hay), since the 'meadow' biomes and the associated birds and insects have adapted to the many centuries of land being farmed and can't survive if the plains aren't grazed and are left to just grow.
  • randomdata 4y ago
    > Managed crop monoculture, which ~half of farmland is That doesn't seem right. According to the FAO (United Nations), only 1.3 billion hectares of land are arable while nearly 5 billion hectares are used for agriculture. That's more like ~25%. And the latter figure only accounts for 38% of the world's land area, so the earlier half figure claim doesn't seem right either. I suppose if the margin of error on those approximations is exceptionally large...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]