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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?”