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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

• jillyboel 2y 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
• mdorazio 2y 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.
  • cpursley 2y ago
    Places that used to be forested and are not productive farmland. There’s lots of places like this, just maybe not in Denmark.
    • Auracle 2y ago
      Not really. Trees plant themselves. If it’s not being actively used for something/mowed it’ll turn back into forest.
      • pintxo 2y ago
        (In the absence of grass and small tree devouring animals)
      • dyauspitr 2y ago
        In the US that would be a bunch of only invasive species for a long time.
        • asdff 2y ago
          Eventually it returns to forest within a lifetime. In certain parts of the midwest you see fields of farmland and occasionally squares of trees in them. Chances are in the early 19th century all of what you saw was farmland and at one point not as much was actively farmed and certain fields no longer plowed. All the trees you find in that plot of what looks like the holdover of some carved up midwestern forest are actually all less than 100 years old and relatively recent growth.
      • cpursley 2y ago
        Tree planting in eroded/damaged ecosystems requires a helping hand - everything from site prep, germination, watering, etc. Source: I’ve planted thousands of trees.
      • simonask 2y ago
        This isn't really true. Growing a forest is way more complicated than you might think - they don't just sprout spontaneously, as trees take a long time to grow and are easily kept down by fauna, landscape, nutrient levels, erosion, and many other factors. I don't remember the details, but I believe it goes something like farm -> heath -> shrubland -> young forest -> mature forest, where each phase has a unique ecosystem of both plant species and animal life. In an extremely heavily cultivated landscape like Denmark (seriously, look at a satellite photo), converting farmland back into forest is a multi-decade project requiring constant maintenance. Converting farmland into marshland (which is the "original" stone-age landscape in many areas) is a multi-century project. Just like it was a multi-century project to convert it into farmland, by the way. Europe has been cultivated for millennia.
        • wrycoder 2y ago
          Exactly. It only takes a couple of decades for nature to reforest, which is an eyeblink, actually. And only a couple more decades to return to mature forest. No humans or projects needed. There is a lot more forest in New England (USA) now, than a century ago.
    • StackRanker3000 2y ago
      That last bit is correct, there aren’t many places like that in Denmark. So the original question remains, where would be a better place for them specifically to plant these trees?
    • insane_dreamer 2y ago
      > just maybe not in Denmark exactly, and we're talking about Denmark, after all
    • mrweasel 2y ago
      Quick history lesson: After the war, with Prussia in 1864, Denmark lost about 33% of it's area. That part was some of the most suited to agriculture. To compensate for those loses Denmark started a process of turning previously unusable land in to farmland. So lakes where drained, the the moors were drained, areas with sandy soil, good for nothing but growing common heather, was heavily fertilised and forests where cut down. There where even suggestion to drain parts of the sea between Denmark and Sweden. In some sense it was good, and basically help shape modern Denmark, but it's just not needed anymore, and has come at the cost of wildlife, native plants and sea creatures. It didn't start out like that, but when you add modern intensive farming on top of killing of most of your nature areas, then things starts to go very wrong. Denmark has almost nothing of it's original nature left.
• jillesvangurp 2y 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.
  • cpursley 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • microtonal 2y ago
      The parent did not say anything about climate and pointed to actual the problem in The Netherlands: nitrogen deposition. Our nature parks are dying because there is far too much nitrogen deposition from nearby farms. (But our current right-wing populist government likes to pretend the problem does not exist, so they have to be slapped on the wrists by courts and the EU.)
      • cpursley 2y ago
        Now that’s a real problem, farm animal excrement is an issue. Seems like one that technology can solve?
        • microtonal 2y ago
          That's what the industry has been saying here for decades and they tried a lot of things, but the problem has only gotten worse. At some point you have to say - apparently you can't fix it, so we have to buy out farmers near nature reserves. But the farmers have been intimidating politicians by blocking highways and inner cities with tractors and other equipment. Funnily, if anyone else does this they get arrested, but farmers get a carte blanche to disrupt society.
          • 2y ago
• timc3 2y 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
  • chickenbig 2y 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).
    • nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
      For a short period I looked into carbon stuff and while forests were good, wetlands were deemed much bigger sinks. It feels like wetlands is a huge ignored area. If what I read at the time holds (I think it was like 6-12x sequestration rate in some regions), a simple thing like rising sea levels would have a huge impact. And anthropogenic destruction of wetlands is also a huge issue and one that is relatively easy to reverse in a lot cases (dams, rerouted rivers). And in some cases, water can just be rerouted occasionally to create temperarly wetlands that are good ecosystems as well. Mossy Earth I think is doing some of these.
      • chickenbig 2y ago
        Strangely enough I have been seeing wetland creation coming up on my radar recently. Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has been proposing these as alternative to acoustic fish deterrent, but the locals who might be affected are not happy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzwrgv71no https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzwrgv71no It would transform the biodiverse habitat into barren, species-poor salt marsh and tidal mud. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-10-09/debates/230FC00B-E144-4F25-9D38-C05804734482/ProposedSaltMarshesPawlettHams https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-10-09/debates/230...
• awjlogan 2y 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.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • tonyedgecombe 2y 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.
    • Epa095 2y ago
      Could food security in case of another global crisis be a good enough reason? I don't know anything about the British situation AT ALL, but I think many in Europe think slightly different about the market-based solution when it comes to both food, medicines, and other essentials after corona. It turns out that when shit hits the fan, countries need to handle the basic needs of their population themselves.
      • rightbyte 2y ago
        You'd need firewood too.
      • OscarCunningham 2y ago
        People don't need lamb in an emergency.
• Galaxeblaffer 2y 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.
  • chipdart 2y 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.
    • panick21_ 2y ago
      > specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded No, its because far lobbies are an important political block
      • sshine 2y ago
        Both can be true. Protecting your agricultural capacity is what convinces the part of the population that does not directly benefit from the subsidies.
• apexalpha 2y 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.
• dataviz1000 2y 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-not-likely-to-survive-in-haiti-when-project-ends/ https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/08/05/us-funded-trees... [2] https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl
  • eesmith 2y 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."
    • dataviz1000 2y ago
      > "Like all the others, he had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop. Like all the others, he had abandoned any idea of subsistence farming to think exclusively in terms of a cash crop; and he had gone on thinking in those terms, even when the crop no longer gave him any cash. Then, like all the others, he had got into debt with the banks. And finally, like all the others, he had learned that what the experts had been saying for a generation was perfectly true : in a semi-arid country it is grass that holds down the soil; tear up the grass, the soil will go. In due course, it had gone. The man from Kansas was now a peon and a pariah; and the experience was making a worse man of him." -- Aldous Huxley, "After Many a Year Dies the Swan" -- 1939 They were warned what would happen. Yes, it was the grasses that keep the soil in place. However, as the article you referenced says, > "As part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Congress established the Soil Erosion Service and the Prairie States Forestry Project in 1935. These programs put local farmers to work planting trees as windbreaks on farms across the Great Plains. The Soil Erosion Service, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) developed and promoted new farming techniques to combat the problem of soil erosion." [2] A bunch of people didn't understand this in Haiti and now they are severely doomed and suffering. Probably not something you want to be incorrect about on the global scale. Although, it is the grasses that hold the top soil in place, it can be mitigated by planting trees.
• gklitz 2y 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_ 2y ago
    In New Zealand the believe that if they removed farm subsidizes, their farmers would quite. Now they are a massive farm product exporter.
    • mmooss 2y ago
      So the public gives them their hard-earned money via taxes, and the farmers reap more money from exporting?
      • panick21_ 2y ago
        No, the public gives them no money and they make money for the country by exporting.
• phil21 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
  • simonask 2y 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.
• postepowanieadm 2y 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-trade-deal-winners-and-losers-in-europe https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/11/19/eu-mercosur-tra... https://forest.fi/article/whos-to-pay-the-cost-of-eus-nature-restoration-regulation-ms-or-eu-finnish-meps-disagree/ https://forest.fi/article/whos-to-pay-the-cost-of-eus-nature... https://hir.harvard.edu/germanys-energy-crisis-europes-leading-economy-is-falling-behind/ https://hir.harvard.edu/germanys-energy-crisis-europes-leadi...
  • RandomThoughts3 2y 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.
  • emptysongglass 2y 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.
• pvaldes 2y 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.
  • RandomThoughts3 2y 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 2y ago
  Because Denmark is almost entirely cities and farmland? There’s already a housing crisis…
• sunflowerfly 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
  Because there's nothing else? 60% of Denmark is farmed land, most of the rest is cities, industry, or suburbs.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
• casey2 2y 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 2y 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_dreamer 2y ago
  Not all farm land is productive, so converting it back to forests and uncultivated land is better overall for the country.
• wiseowise 2y 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.
• emptysongglass 2y 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.
• jopsen 2y 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.
• blitzar 2y ago
  Farmland is not some natural balanced healthy state for the land to exist in.