Guest essay by Eric Worrall
But stops short or demanding collectivisation under a central government climate planning authority.
New climate change report underscores the need to manage land for the short and long term
August 12, 2019 9.11pm AEST
Chris E. Forest Professor of Climate Dynamics, Pennsylvania State UniversityIn its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes how agriculture, deforestation, and other human activities have altered 70% of the land on Earth’s surface.
These changes are significantly adding to climate-warming emissions. They are also making forests and other natural systems, which can store key greenhouse gases, less able to do so.
…
For example, consider how humans produce food. Farmers are constrained by the climate where they live, which provides certain ranges of temperatures, precipitation and sunshine. Modern industrialized agriculture enables farmers to improve their local conditions by using fertilizer to increase soil nutrients or pumping water to irrigate crops.
These strategies pose trade-offs: They raise food production, but also can increase energy use or conversion of undeveloped land for more farming, which potentially contributes to climate change. Rising demands on Earth’s food, energy and water systems ultimately generate higher risks globally for everyone.
In contrast, strategies that make agriculture more climate-friendly – such as planting cover crops to protect bare fields or practicing no-till farming – have the potential to also save energy and water by making soil healthier. The challenge is finding ways to shift current farming and land use practices toward these more sustainable approaches.
…
The challenge, then, is convincing people to use land in ways that do more than maximize short-term benefits. As the IPCC report states, degraded land produces less food and stores less carbon. But conserving and restoring land so it can store more carbon will also improve food security.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/new-climate-change-report-underscores-the-need-to-manage-land-for-the-short-and-long-term-121716
Farmers in my experience are very focussed on the long term viability of their land, in many cases the same family has managed the land for generations. The suggestion that farmers don’t prioritise long term productivity in my opinion is absurd.
But Professor Forest seems dissatisfied that farmers seek to maximise production, even if this means using fertiliser and fossil fuel guzzling agricultural machines.
If Professor Forest gets his way, in my opinion the result would be an agricultural disaster.
Food production is fragile; 20th century history is littered with examples of heavy handed political interference wrecking agricultural productivity in a single generation.
Any attempt to dispossess farmers either openly through land seizures or through the back door via rigid bureaucratic planning directives invites famine.
As others have stated – We really need a 5 year agriculture plan – central planners always know best
The professor should be careful. In the last great state controlled agriculture episode the professors were put to work in the fields.
What a great idea. Though current professors have zero understanding of the real world, so one would have to have a retraining boot camp for them. Still, I like the idea.
and a short while before I logged in tonight I got this..
https://www.globalmeatnews.com/Article/2019/08/14/Land-conversion-study-shows-negative-economic-impact?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14-Aug-2019&c=j%2FnIs1FdlzW3hvzx%2Beb%2FAw%3D%3D&p2=
they didnt need to look at NZ the area I live in has had a serious infestation of Bluegums planted for paper and what the idiots thought was investment with big returns, and we also have pine plantations for extra insult
its ruined good farmland stuffed the watertables and weve lost hundreds of families over the large areas they planted.
it also makes any homes or towns nearby at serious risk from bushfires cos once these concentrated forests go up …its really ugly
nothing much lives in them some birds but not many species live there they just visit, roos and foxes n rabbits find them useful runthroughts to raid what little farmlands around them
natural scrubs full of birdsong and critters
the plantatiions are silent.
except for the few yrs they come in to cut em n then the trucks to chew the ground n our roads to hell as well.
He is a Professor of Climate Dynamics, a subject no one understands.
Thanks! I misread it at first.
I thought he was a “Professor of Climate Dramatics”!
Trofim Lysenko –> bulldozed Joe Stalin into starving to death millions of people; Krushchev sent him into retirement, but then:
Mao Tse-Tung embraced Lysenkoism and 30 million +/- Chinese people starved to death. My dad used to get mad at us when we were kids because we wouldn’t clean our plates. (1953) He told us children were starving to death in China. When you’re 6, you think that’s a joke. Then you find out…. not so much.
And then along comes Pol Pot….
Yes, let’s “listen” to these ignorant people who think they know more about farming than people who farm. I hope they get a chance to find out what it’s like to go without food for weeks at a time.
“Mischa the dog lies dead in the bog.
The children cry over the carcass.
The mist chokes my heart, covers the mourners.
At least this year we eat.” – Cheers – “Another Christmas of Agony”
Stand in line for 3 day old bread only to watch the person in front of you get the last green loaf.
We need to establish brown shirt uniforms for these University Professors. They believe they will have control of the politburo when they time comes.
The Norks did the same damned thing and still are staving because of it.
Ref – The River in Darkness
Right you are, Sara.
If the younger generation succeeds in their quest to embrace Socialism in the US, …. then a majority of them will starve to death …….. because Socialism will literally destroy farming.
Of course Joe, the great scientists of the socialist republics, aided by their honorable socialist bureaucrats know far better and deeper how to control agricultural production.
Just look at the history of the great bureaucratic successes of past when socialist values fed all the great nations of the wonderful socialist republics of the world.
[do I need a sarcastic indicator on this?]
Stalin tried this in the Ukraine in the 20’s.
How did that work out?
30 million dead from starvation?
Michelle Obama already tried to starve our school children … and that didn’t go over too well
Even vegans salivate involuntarily at the smell of frying bacon. Ever known ANYone, EVER, who salivated at the smell of boiling cabbage?
Thought so. Because BIOLOGY.
Only desperately hungry Gulag inmates.
Quite well. It all depends on what your objectives were in the first place, of course.
I say this as the proud grandson of Alexander Wienerberger who was one of only two people to document and expose the holodomor, and spent 16 years in Lubyanka for his efforts.
In contrast to the New York Times which got a Pulitzer Prize for their meritorious work in covering it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
Pol Pot had a good go at it too. Did wonders for people in Cambodia.
And in South Vietnam after unification.
Still going on in North Korea, because instead of modern tractors, the Fat Little B***terd spends his money on rocket science and the farmers use cattle to pull plows.
And still fertilize with human feces, in the traditional way, so that everyone is infected with roundworms or worse. There is not enough food even for the people, let alone their parasites as well.
Mr Forrest needs to get into the fields more so he has a better perspective of what it takes to farm and produce , without BS
I disagree.
The inaptly named Mr. Forest would be an excellent farmer – anyone that can sling manure that far and wide should have prodigious crop yields.
Pillage idiot brilliant
Tillage idiot?
Richard Chenoweth: I wonder if professor Forrest is willing to risk loosing a whole year’s income if something goes wrong as farmers and ranchers sometimes have to do. An example of this happened this year in the central states where some areas got so much rain, for so long that some farmers could not plant their planned crop because the soil was too wet. Farmers and ranchers have to have such a broad and extensive base of knowledge and skills, from economics and accounting, soils, terrain, types and varieties of crops and livestock, varieties of technics, equipment, technology, know what to do and when, not limit themselves to “9-5”. I would say that no simple professor can measure up to that standard, he’d flunk. I’m a city slicker and even I know that. I wouldn’t even a 5% grade on my report card.
John:
Except in the above article, the Climate Dyn…something, firmly believe he knows how to improve the land.
Mr. not so bright professor Forest needs to spend five years farming so he learns the lesson well. Otherwise he would claim the first year was a fluke;
the second and third year he’ll blame others;
the fourth and fifth years, he’ll learn what happens if the farm equipment isn’t regularly maintained.
If he had gotten out into the farms, he would have also learned that many family farms were destroyed by the previous federal inheritance tax. The tax was based upon the market value of the land. Parents die and the next generation was stuck with paying taxes of an amount greater than several years of farm income. Farms were split up and parcels sold to pay the inheritance tax.
same in Aus and the govt is tinkering doing it again..
getting rid of that stupid tax was what allowed families to keep the family home not be forced to sell it ditto the farms also.
even if the deceased owned it outright the new tax made it un-inheritable by most descendants.
only the rich could keep their properties
Another academic telling us all what to do. Professor of Climate Dynamics nonetheless. What a joke.
Yup. Professor of Climate Dynamics=Somebody whose full-time job is making up scary stories about what might happen in the distant future while knowing effectively nothing about it.
Dear professor
Please tell us what the ideal CO2 level is for agriculture.
Pol Pot … Seeking to create an agrarian socialist society, his government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
Wow. This guy really keeps right up to date with the latest in agricultural practices. I am impressed.
Any agricultural types want to chime in and tell our good prof.:
A) How long cover crops, setting fields to to fallow, planting clover, have been around.
B) How long low-till and no-till practices have been around.
Some random guy, after endless nagging from his wife, finally gets on board a cruise ship for his wife’s dream vacation. Shortly after boarding, he is struck by a thought. Gasp! There is air on the inside all the way down. If the ship springs a leak, it will fill with water and could SINK. DISASTER! Man raises the alarm to one and all, and demands to see the Captain. Urgent! Urgent! We Are All At Risk!
{Man has no idea this has been thought of.} (Totally unaware of the concept “bilge pump”.)
Rumor has it that the man is a professor at Penn. State.
Strange, PSU should know all about bilge.
Exactly, Tony. All of these and many more farm practices this PhD (acronym for “Pin heaD” in this case) has never heard of have been SOP for decades. US corn yield/acre is up 8X since the 1930’s and wheat up about 3.5X. Those “ignorant farmers” this guy is worried about routinely use satellite imagery, sophisticated soil analysis, GPS guided and controlled machinery to plant, fertilize and harvest, and keep comprehensive data bases of their land to monitor and track items like yield for every individual acre year to year, soil moisture at various points in each field, soil ph and micro-nutrients and many other factors. The days of the hayseed farmer with a mule are long gone. One thing has NOT changed, though. They don’t want (or need) a bunch of Guberment city boys with lots of degrees and no knowledge telling them what to do.
Piled higher and Deeper.
Post hole digger
Farmers have land – so are wealthy. Government takes their productive land and gives it to supporters who have no idea what to do with it.
Worked in Zimbabwe! /sarc
In western nations that is just not true. Most farmers are indebted or close too it and that is just getting worse as they have essentially no options about who to sell too due to massive consolidation in the agriculture and food sectors. In the UK dairy farmers are forced to sell milk at a loss to Tesco’s for example and they rely on EU subsidies for a third of their income.
Just read an article yesterday stating average debt for a farm is 1.3 million. Having grown up on a farm I’m not surprised, for years farmers take out loans to pay farming expenses and pay the loan off after harvest. They have cash flow but not a lot of it sticks to their fingers so they turn around and take out another loan. One bad year they might be able to weather, two bad years will ruin most, three bad years and there’s no small farmers left. This contributes to the other problem facing the farming community, aging farmers. Younger generations just don’t want to be farmers.
FYI, bad years just doesn’t mean flood/drought/wind/pestilence either. A bad year can be an expensive piece of equipment such as their combine needing major repairs or replacement. You want a shocker, look up what a new John Deere Combine costs. In most areas you can buy a nice house, build that shop you always wanted and still have money left over. Then start counting how many combines, windrower, tractors, trucks, etc.. your local farmer has.
Izaak – seems you missed the /sarc tag.
I live in a rural agricultural area (originally the Cambrian Mountains, now Lincolnshire)
A follower of Saint Jeremy of Corbyn has recently moved here (from the city) and espouses the belief that farmers have land and are therefore wealthy, and criticises local people for being backward and should allow children to have more say in making decisions and that we should be more “progressive”- even tells us he’s “almost a local” – you can probably guess the rest.
Quite … & newest innovations are water sensors set out to text farmer of plants’ status + drones using spectrum analysis of growing sectors + technology adapted to orchard analysis + robotic pickers w/sensors that assess each individual fruit ideal harvest, etc.
Agricultural progress has it’s carbon
utilization pretty much sorting itself out without the need for desk jockeys out in the field.
One of my farmer cousins was an early drone adopter. Drones might replace manned crop dusting, an uninsurably dangerous trade.
I think there are instructions regarding fallow in the Old Testament. The Professor must have seen a Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl and thought it just happened.
Farmers maximize long term returns. Choice of crop, fertilizer, pest and weed control, irrigation timing and rates, all while maintaining and improving the soil.
Well, global temperatures are the highest they’ve been in 1,000 years. The 1930s Dust Bowl was the warmest it’s been in the last century. Hence, we are in the 1930s. Have Ma Joad make room for us on the truck.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Climate%20Change/Subatlantic_Had.png
“They raise food production, but also can increase energy use or conversion of undeveloped land for more farming, which POTENTIALLY contributes to climate change. ” (capitalization mine, tpg)
So we should let government dictate farming practices based on something that might happen? Wow!
Farmers will make those changes to their practices that creates the maximum good for the greatest number. It’s called Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Such as planting early wheat to shade out weeds and then over planting the wheat with soybeans as the cash crop. Something government would *never* come up with!
There is one question that always occurs to me with these “climate change solutions”, and the Professor is at an ideal university to inquire:
“If the entire US; no, make that the entire world, adopted the policies you recommend, what will be the change in global temperature in 2040?”
That guy Mann should be able to tell you.
“These strategies pose trade-offs: They raise food production, but also can increase energy use or conversion of undeveloped land for more farming, which potentially contributes to climate change”
This makes no sense. If these strategies raise food production, then per lb of food it would require less energy and less land. Lowering food production would require more energy use and conversion of undeveloped land for more farming. Organic farming is much less “climate friendly” (what a stupid term) as it requires much more land, and I’ll bet more energy inputs as well, for the same output.
Exactly my thought. The most intensive farming is obviously best for the environment. But since the Alarmists all also support organic farming, they have to claim otherwise.
Good catch. Forrest is so dumb he can’t see the internal contradiction in his statements.
This is exactly what I realized, trying to follow the logic:
So, we are getting far more efficient than evar, in the history of mankind, and so we must handicap ourselves?
My father in law was a farmer and being a biology major was interested in how he cared for his land. He would put his land in a crop that did not make much money but was a nitrogen fixer and was good for the land. These eggheads need to go talk to tillers of the land and maybe they will learn something.
There has been no meaningful warming of the climate for around 20 years (the only warming “event” was after we removed smog/cloud causing sunlight reflecting = cooling pollutants in the 1970s).
Penn State keeps hitting home runs…Sandusky, Mann, and now this bloke.
Hmmm. Sounds just like the Chinese Great Leap Forward, where government steps in and decides how to run the farms. 56 million died from starvation.
Communism: mass-murdering its way to Utopia.
There’s Climate Scientology logic for you: If you so growing food, it will improve “food security”.
I’d love to see the logic behind that one…
But the reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models. the climate change we are experiencing today is quite small and is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So what they want to do will have no effect on climate but may cause very severer economic damage, globally.
Holodomor comes to mind.
The Professor is a Luddite, using quaint terms like “soil health.”
Some consider that the main function of soil is to keep plants anchored and upright, with fertilizers (when understood) doing the heavy lifting productivity.
Although I don’t agree with much of what he says, I believe it was Wendell Berry who first publicly advanced the idea which you paraphrased; “Some consider that the main function of soil is to keep plants anchored and upright…”
Soil health is a Luddite idea? If it isn’t soil, it’s merely some variant of rock.
I can only view your post as sarcasm, without a sarctag.
Less agriculture, eat more academics. That’ll fix it!
yarpos August 13, 2019 at 8:05 pm
No. They are junk food and stain your teeth
I’ve noticed that there are two types of people in this world: those who generate wealth, and those who use it up.
Wealth is generated by the winning or producing of resources, and there are 4 types of endeavour that generate wealth–mining, manufacturing, farming and forestry. Everything else (like Penn State professors) use those resources–the wealth–up; they also try to move as much of it as they can into their own pockets, but they produce none of it.
I watched in the 70’s as forestry was attacked; environmental groups blockaded logging companies, lobbied governments to lock up timber land in parks and protected areas. Then they went after mining, claiming all manner of pollution, even by metals (which mines tend to remove from rock by the way, not put into it). Then manufacturing was attacked, so that now everything you buy is made in China, it’s been chased out of Canada and the US. I’ve watched the systematic destruction of the oil (related to mining) industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan, by demonizing oil sands and obstructing the building of pipelines.
Remember a guy named Niemoeller?–he wrote this:
‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.’
Well–now they’re coming after farming too. You figure out who’s next, especially if it could be you–but does this not look like a systematic destruction of western economy?
One thing I’ve noticed about left wing academics. To a person, they are convinced that they know everything about everything. They are also convinced that if only they could get enough power, they can perfect society.
That’s not quite true. Left wing academics are convinced that they know everything only about subjects in which it is not possible to disprove the things they claim to know. That way they can say whatever they want, publish as many papers as they want, attend whatever symposiums they want – in all kinds of exotic locations to boot, and all without ever having to step outside the magical, theoretical world that exists within the ivory towers of academia.
No, academics far too often think they know all about Economics, and consistently put forward policies that have always failed. Last time I went back to my university, I was lectured about trade and business by a man who has spent his entire life looking at a small part of plant ecology in rainforest. He knew best despite my career in finance of course.
Left wing academics who drive big SUVs and vacation in warm places love to lecture others about global warming.
Except it’s now called climate change because the observed warming isn’t matching their computer models.
Can you say: ‘Obama’?
Zig-Zag
About twenty-five years ago a Ukrainian society in Canada was raising funds to complete a documentary on the atrocities of central planning.
When completed it was taken to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp–CBC–which is state-owned and directed.
It would not show the documentary because it put Communism in a bad light.
I was surprised to learn that eventually was shown on PBS.
Zig-Zag – would that be this PBS broadcast avilable as a DVD? https://www.ebay.com/itm/COMMANDING-HEIGHTS-DVD-The-Battle-For-The-World-Economy-3-Discs/254201275424?
“This three-part PBS documentary explores the details surrounding the new global economy and its importance to the worldwide community. Filmed on five continents and based on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prizewinner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, COMMANDING HEIGHTS is an intricate look at the fight for economic power featuring stunning footage and interviews with world leaders and thinkers such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, former President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, Mexican President Vincente Fox, Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.”
Bob Hoye -was that this one (still available to purchase)?
“This three-part PBS documentary explores the details surrounding the new global economy and its importance to the worldwide community. Filmed on five continents and based on the best-selling book by Pulitzer Prizewinner Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, COMMANDING HEIGHTS is an intricate look at the fight for economic power featuring stunning footage and interviews with world leaders and thinkers such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, former President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, Mexican President Vincente Fox, Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.2
We need to see how much grant $$$ this got. I think it might be good data whenever we see one of these rent-seeking nut jobs, it should also include the public $$ involved to get this amazing (/sarc) insight…
I think the Democrat candidates should invite Dr. Forest to campaign with them in Iowa!
Bigbub.
Maybe the Green Leap Forward?
That would be a Freudian slip.
I have one big bug bear about modern farming practices. When I was a kid in India, my Dad was trying to explain to farmers that contour ploughing would reduce soil loss in the monsoon season. It was an idea that just did not take because ploughing with a bullock team is hard work, and if you have to follow the contour rather than the most convenient lines, it was more work. Flying across Canada at certain seasons, and even sometimes from the road, you can see that here too, farmers ignore contour ploughing. Its one of the obvious thing to prevent your topsoil washing into the ravines and gullies. But it is too much extra work to bother with. I think it is because the effects of soil loss take a long time to become a problem, and farmers, whether family owned or corporate, seem to take a much shorter timeframe into account.
Fran, you may want to read up on contour plowing in North America–this from the simplest of sources:
‘This was one of the main procedures promoted by the UK Soil Conservation Service (the current Natural Resources Conservation Service) during the 1930s. The US Department of Agriculture established the Soil Conservation Service in 1935 during the Dust Bowl when it became apparent that soil erosion was a huge problem along with desertification.
The extent of the problem was such that the 1934 “Yearbook of Agriculture” noted that Approximately 35 million acres [142,000 km²] of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production. . . . 100 million acres [405,000 km²] now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres [506,000 km²] of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil. This can lead to large scale desertification which can permanently transform a formerly productive landscape to an arid one that becomes increasingly intensive and expensive to farm.[6]
The Soil Conservation Service worked with state governments and universities with established agriculture programs such as the University of Nebraska to promote the method to farmers. By 1938, the introduction of new agricultural techniques such as contour plowing had reduced the loss of soil by 65% despite the continuation of the drought. ” wikipedia)
Note that the advantage is limited to certain slope limits.
Not much plowing is done on large farms here anymore, different tilling techniques are used. I may be one of the few people still using a plow, but that is only because I work far too small a patch of ground to even turn large modern machinery around.
By the way, it is interesting to muse about where all that soil ‘blown away’ by dust-bowl winds ended up. Somebody, somewhere, had more soil by 1940 than they had in 1930. In geology we have the fancy term loess, but it often was formerly someone else’s soil.
In the Dirty Thirties, Saskatchewan was well on its way to becoming a desert. Thanks to the work of some government men and scientists, the disaster was averted. Men Against the Desert Thank goodness they didn’t have a bunch of environmentalist nutcases fighting them.
Guess where my (paternal) family left the farm in 1936–Edenwold, right in the north of the Palliser Triangle; my father was 16. We as kids before television got all the stories of the 30’s in Saskatchewan, while milking our cows in the Fraser Valley.
Alarmists really hate people!
https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/red-meat-could-be-next-in-line-for-a-sin-tax-after-sugar-fitch-says-20190814-p52gvb.html
Despite all the spring weather hoo-haa, the corn harvest isn’t looking bad.
https://nebraska.tv/news/ntvs-grow/usda-surprises-again-with-high-corn-yields-expected
As always the aim of these schemes is to gain more power for their authors and solidify their niche in the State structure. it is never in pursuit of some high moral objective.
I loved the most non-sequiter argument I have seen in a while
Actually the reverse is usually true the more you use the more you have stored. That is why developed nations are much more resilient to disasters than third world countries. Usually animals and nature are the losers when push comes to shove on supply issues.
It is the usual socialist junk that somehow we are all equal and all the worlds resources are divided equally to each person and so if one person suffers we all do.
Perhaps a season or two in a rice paddy would be instructive. He could make suggestions about how to do it better.
Professor Forest should be careful in what he wants – collectivization of agriculture.
The Revolution to bring that Comrade Forest should be aware that always turns on its own.
Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, the Nazis purge of Jewish academics, the Bolshevik’s purge of Russian Academies, Castro’s purge of US trained academics… all eliminated in the name of some perverse/sick version of purity. And it is always of the Left. Of intolerance.
Everything we now see in Climate Change is a play on Orwell’s 1984 – the Left’s playbook.
I suspect that the good Professor Woodfortrees needs to get out more into the big wide world, in particular the farming world!
O/T: I once attended a talk on Structural Engineering techniques, linked to practices, by a Cambridge engineering Professor. He was very knowledgeable about an awful lot of theorectical engineering techniques & practices, however, at dinner after the meeting it became clear that before entering the hallowed world of academia, he’d spent the bear minimum of time required to gain the requisit experience to become a Chartered Structural Engineer (assuming he didn’t get there through the “purely academic route”!) My professional colleague & I were most concerend at being “lectured” on how to get the job done, efficiently, practically, economically, etc., by somebody with the minimum ofsuch experience! Retired Engineer signing off! 😉
Sports coaching , teaching and farmer share one thing in common .
There are endless ‘experts’ who can tell those who actually do it , what they are doing wrong despite having no experience , no training and no qualifications in the area.
Yet he lives and works in a state reforestation because of the success of intensive agriculture. Maybe if he looked out of his window once in a while he might see something.
…a suggestion that applies in spades to everyone on the hysteria bandwagon.
Professor Forest should get himself s copy of The Nature and Properties of Soils by Buckman and Brady and read it thoroughly.
He should be able to get a second hand copy for about $5.
I think it would give him more insight into soils and agriculture than all his previous ‘experience’, and shouldn’t take him more than a weekend to read.
Those that can, do..
Those that cannot, teach..
Those that cannot teach, teach at PSU..
Just remember when the famines begin who were driving such an odious policy. They will be hanging from lampposts.
Dancing angels debate: which will kill more people, state control of agriculture, or geoengineering?
Why stop short of collectivization? I worked so well in the USSR! (sarc)
Full disclosure: I work for the company I’m about to promote.
I highly recommend taking a look into what Indigo Agriculture is doing to make these sustainable practices more mainstream in American farming.
There’s a unique opportunity here for a triple win of we align the incentives right. Sustainable practices like cover cropping can actually be profitable for growers, especially if we can bring more traceability to the industry so that consumers are enabled to demand these practices from those who grow their food. The planet wins, farmers make more money, and consumers get higher quality outputs.
Mob rule of agriculture. That’ll work out well.
Someone should point out to Forrest, life is like a box of chocolates…..
Every attempt to produce food collectively following advice from state controlled experts, has been a disaster for the people and ultimately for the state.
The USSR, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Venezuela,and so on, all thought they knew best. Is there some kind of commonality these countries all share?
Yes.
It is called Totalitarianism. It is not as good at controlling things as the totalitarians would like to believe.
I hope the EU are aware of this.
I thought 70% of the earth was ocean. There there is Antarctic….so how have we changed 70%.
Well of course, it is the Penn State School of Bomb Throwers for attention and thrill seeking in an isolated land grant school location.
“But stops short of demanding the urban bourgeoisie be sent to the killing fields.”
There, fixed it for ya.
The last time a Leftist took control of Agriculture, we got the Holodomor.
The professor wants more control over agriculture, fine, put him to work in the field.
+10
Somebody plug the professor into the hyperdrive.
Who knew that degrees in climate dynamooses or whatever conveyed expert knowledge for a plethora of topics so that graduates can lecture experts who have spent most of their life farming?
Obviously not a professional Forrest is a desk jockey who presumes to lecture on the ground experts in farming…
Armed with a few buzzwords; e.g. cover crops, no-till farming and the gross assumption that he knows more than every Western farmer; non-professional Forrest can lecture the whole world.
“Must be a college boy…”, a common epithet where hard work employees meet someone who is book smart but skills and experience stupid.
‘Rising demands on Earth’s food, energy and water systems ultimately generate higher risks globally for everyone.’
There are no such systems. Suggesting there are, and touting global risks, is a promo for totalitarian world government. The professor is just using food, energy and water, as scare tactics to promote the Cultural Marxist agenda.
Planting cover crops on fallow fields, or between plantings, and no-till practices are both good ideas and beneficial,not only to the land but to the farmer and his profits.
There is nothing in the excerpted sections of the paper that are less than sensible, and already practiced on much of the farmland in Upstate New York. The two expressed suggestions, cover-crops and no-till, will in no way results in “an agricultural disaster”, but rather would increase framer profits and improve the condition of the land at the same time.
*buzzt – click*
Lord Thanos……..Rev. Malthus on line two. Lord Thanos…..Line Two!
“Those who won’t plow preach?”
Let them lease 100 acres of farmland to work and control without making use of any goods or services that involve the use of fossil fuels. That gives them more control over agriculture. We can see by their example how much food for the hungry they can produce and what effect they will have on climate. What ever plot of land they would end up making use of they most likely cannot even get to the property without making use of fossil fuels.