Farms To Trees

[Nosi]

President Barack Obama has a cap & trade plan up his sleeve that plans to use trees as carbon sinks, paying farmers to plant them on pastures & cropland. The worry, according to Vilsack (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/29/forests-vs-food-study-worries-agriculture-chief/) and others is that planting trees will become more profitable than growing crops causing a spike in food prices as places and interest in growing food become more scarce.:scared:

[Wowbagger]

If that is true for some farmers, then those farmers who actually plant a lot more food, and few (if any) trees, will make a killing!

[tyr_13]

If that is true for some farmers, then those farmers who actually plant a lot more food, and few (if any) trees, will make a killing!

Exactly.


I for one, like forests. Tree farms are closer to forests than fields, so I even like those.

[NewtonTrino]

Have you looked around? Food is too cheap anyway!

[Nosi]

Have you looked around? Food is too cheap anyway!

$1.45 for an apple is cheap? :jaw-dropp
$2.00 for a head of iceberg lettuce? :jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp

[quixotecoyote]

$1.45 for an apple is cheap? :jaw-dropp
$2.00 for a head of iceberg lettuce? :jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp

Where do you live? I can get a pound of apples for just over a buck.

[tyr_13]

I think that requiring businesses to have one tree per so many parking spaces, in locals where trees are naturally sustainable, would be a great idea. Most of the larger stores in this area do it anyway, but in cities who don't get the title 'Tree City', it couldn't hurt.

(On a side note, my brother was once told that pictures of the local city weren't 'authentic' or 'really city' because you could see a tree in each of them.)

[tesscaline]

Where do you live? I can get a pound of apples for just over a buck.Ditto. Iceberg lettuce is, oh, 75 cents. Carrots are less than a dollar a pound, as low as .50 a pound if you catch them on sale. And that's me shopping in the upscale supermarket chain in my area. If I were to shop at the cheapo places, well, I could probably cut most of those prices by 1/3 (but I'd have to sacrifice buying locally grown sustainable crops if I did that).

Personally, I'd rather pay farmers to plant trees than I would pay farmers to not plant corn.

[Nosi]

Where do you live? I can get a pound of apples for just over a buck.

Prescott, Arizona.

[Nosi]

Ditto. Iceberg lettuce is, oh, 75 cents. Carrots are less than a dollar a pound, as low as .50 a pound if you catch them on sale. And that's me shopping in the upscale supermarket chain in my area. If I were to shop at the cheapo places, well, I could probably cut most of those prices by 1/3 (but I'd have to sacrifice buying locally grown sustainable crops if I did that).

Personally, I'd rather pay farmers to plant trees than I would pay farmers to not plant corn.

Both trees and corn gulp water from fossil aquifers. How are trees better for the aquifers than the corn? I understand the carbon sinks...

[drkitten]

Both trees and corn gulp water from fossil aquifers. How are trees better for the aquifers than the corn? I understand the carbon sinks...

Trees generally gulp less water, is my understanding, because they've not generally been bred to produce unsustainable crop yields.

[ponderingturtle]

President Barack Obama has a cap & trade plan up his sleeve that plans to use trees as carbon sinks, paying farmers to plant them on pastures & cropland. The worry, according to Vilsack (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/29/forests-vs-food-study-worries-agriculture-chief/) and others is that planting trees will become more profitable than growing crops causing a spike in food prices as places and interest in growing food become more scarce.:scared:

Dear god, there have been tree farms for decades, they must be killing people now right?

[GreenLines]

Buy farmland
Plant trees
Get money from government
New administration comes to power
Sell trees
...
Profit?

[Beerina]

Planting forests, especially fast-growth trees, is one way to terraform, so to speak, the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

However, I would caution this, especially when attaching profit to it (I'd rather see utilities buy planted trees, so to speak, than government doing it) lest humanity go overboard and induce an ice age.

"Please," he said, knowing nobody was listening. "Take it easy." "Global warming" is a minor problem, if it's even a net problem at all, while an ice age is a true disaster that would kill billions.

[Darth Rotor]

"Please," he said, knowing nobody was listening. "Take it easy." "Global warming" is a minor problem, if it's even a net problem at all, while an ice age is a true disaster that would kill billions.
You said that last bit like it's a bad thing. :boggled:

[tesscaline]

Both trees and corn gulp water from fossil aquifers. How are trees better for the aquifers than the corn? I understand the carbon sinks...
If you understood the carbon sinks, I doubt you'd be asking that question...

[Segnosaur]

Gotta wonder how useful such a plan is in actually reducing CO2 content.

Yes, the trees would consume CO2 and act as a 'carbon sink' during their growth phase. But, there is no guarantee that such a plan would work long term. Eventually, some of these trees will die (either from forest fire or some other cause) and the carbon that they worked so hard to capture will get released into the atmosphere again.

[MikeMangum]

Exactly.


I for one, like forests. Tree farms are closer to forests than fields, so I even like those.

Try explaining this concept to those who advocate for recycling paper, the pulp for which comes mostly from private tree farms, in which the trees are grown specifically for pulp. Apparently even that isn't "sustainable" enough.

[Eyeron]

My scamdar is going off.