I've seen a bit of confusion regarding this. First, it's 10% of Denmark's total land area, which is roughly equivalent to 15% of farmland area. Second, the conversion of farmland area into nature and forests is mainly for improving water quality, as excess nitrogen from agriculture has essentially killed the rivers and coastal waters through oxygen depletion from algae.
Regarding global warming and CO2, the area conversion of peatlands will help, but the major change here is the introduction of a carbon tax for the entire agricultural industry. And to end confusion regarding other emissions than CO2, it's actually a CO2-equivalent (CO2e) tax, which includes a range of other gasses. E.g., 1kg of methane is 25kg CO2e.
If you'd like to read more, see the two PDF documents below, which are the main official documents. They're in Danish, but upload them to Claude or ChatGPT, and you'll have a much better source of information if you'd like to know more about the specifics and how the actual implementation is planned.
[1] https://www.regeringen.dk/media/13261/aftale-om-et-groent-da...
[2] https://mgtp.dk/media/iinpdy3w/aftale_om_implementering_af_e...
I am very conflicted on a carbon tax for the agriculture industry. It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins. The transition from regenerative agriculture is expensive & rising food costs has a destabilizing effect.
There need to be changes, but I am not convinced that this will have the desired effects. Its quite possible this leads to a net conversion of farmland to residential or commercial property rather than nature.
Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions. Also, that subsidy distorts industry choices in favor of carbon.
The industry might be accustomed to profiting from the subsidy, but that doesn't make them entitled to it! And certainly the industry has had plenty of time to anticipate and adjust to the problems of carbon emissions.
Governments pay to keep food at the cheapest point possible to ensure stability. a fed population doesn't kill their governments. Agriculture is not a regular industry; its a national security issue
Farming is not a profitable endeavor. There would be a lot less financial advisors in the world otherwise. A carbon tax will either drive up prices or reduce suppliers, increasing prices. Reducing farmland will require more efficient methods which will also drive up prices
The result will be the public pays more for food, not the agriculture industry makes any more or less money. It will require more imports which will come from countries with less regulation and more exploitable resources.
We've seen the story of disruptions to the food supply play out before. The reality is this is a more dangerous gamble than most people realize.
Denmark has a population of 5.8 million and currently produces enough to feed 15 million. There’s no need for imports because of 15% less farmland. Besides, all this export only contributes about 1% of GDP. So it’s not economically important either.
One can even argue that the reduction in environmental and climate impact will create room for other industries that already are carbon-taxed.
1. Agriculture is not a machine like consistent harvest giver, especially with more climate change (that’ll happen regardless of emission slowdown), it is good to have produce enough to feed 5.8(=6 million approx), a bad harvest can bring that 15 million down to 7 million very fast.
2. All produce is not of same quality, 15 million people’s produce will probably only produce 11-12 million produce that is marketable in stores after transporting it
3. Economies of scale matters, going from 15 million people’s produce to a 10 or 8 million produce doesnt just means a linear cost reduction, the price per unit for crops also rises, which can potentially make it hard to compete with other agro hubs in the Eurozone, dwindling Denmark’s independent source of food supply over time.
Denmark does not have to stand alone thanks to the EU.
That may change in the future if the populist parties gain more traction in the eastern EU.
As you point out, there are several valid reasons to subsidise farming. But then subsidise farming, not carbon emissions! And while you are at it, use those subsidies to encourage farming that is sustainable, both for the climate as well as biodiversity.
And that can be sustained in international crisis: farming that is a house of cards highly dependent on international supply chains of fertilizer, feedstock and fuel won't help you all that much under blockade.
No-one mentions this when food security is discussed. The farmers here in NL use the security excuse too but absolutely no-one mentions that their food production is directly dependant upon the import of magnitudes higher tonnage of feedstock - soya from Brazil - than the meat / dairy it produces. Then I'm not even looking at the fertilizers / chemicals which are also imported.
Isn't that what they are doing? They subsidize the farmers separately, and charge a carbon tax separately. Even if those are initially the same amount you would think that the incentive structure would encourage farmers to shift to less c02 methods, as that improves profit?
What's the point of a carbon tax if it's balanced by a government subsidy?
Edit: Genuinely curious what I'm missing..
Low carbon farms balance would be: "low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax
High carbon farms balance would be: "high carbon" profit + subsidy - high carbon tax
If ["low carbon" profit - small carbon tax] > ["high carbon" profit - high carbon tax] (e.g. if the carbon tax is high enough), farms have an incentive to lower their carbon emissions.
The subsidy is here to make sure ["low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax] > 0
The subsidy could be independent from the carbon emissions (e.g. by subsidies on the produced goods) while the carbon tax isn't, effectively creating an incentive to produce in a less carbon intensive manner.
If I can make 1 unit of food for €50 and use 50 tons of carbon, or make it for €60 and use 10 tons of carbon, a carbon tax and food subsidy would allow me to sell that €60 low carbon food for €50 and force me to sell the high carbon food for €60
This gives an economic incentive to use the lower carbon method, funded by those who use more carbon, while not changing the end price or output.
Just to provide the numbers: in 2030, a tax will be introduced of 120 DKK (~16€) / ton CO2e, which linearly increases each year until it reaches 300 DKK (~40€) / ton CO2e in 2035. However, the farmers can get subsidies for changing their practices and adopting new technologies, in order to reduce their emissions. I.e., the government will give you money to change your production, so you can minimize the carbon taxes you have to pay. There are more technicalities to how it works, but that's the gist of it. The important part is that the goal is to transition to new technologies and production methods, which reduces emissions per unit food produced.
There will be no food subsidy, however, and a rough estimate of the increase of food cost is something like 1.5%, with beef having the highest increase. Take this estimate with a grain of salt though, as it's difficult to estimate. An increase in food cost is expected though.
You tax the carbon (something you want less of) and you subsidise something else you want more of. So you might end up with the average farmer not having a change of costs, but still disincentivising stuff we don't want e.g. carbon emissions.
I am not sure how this responds to the comment you are actually responding to. You say,
> Governments pay to keep food cheap > A carbon tax will either drive up prices or [drive up prices]
So, this is just number rearranging. The public pays either way. Ok. The comment you replied to says
> Currently the public subsidizes the agriculture industry by paying for the consequences of the industry's carbon emissions.
So the public pays in this case too. More number rearranging. Not at all clear why this makes prices increase.
So why do you think this implies prices increase? Do you think the price of carbon determined by the government is too high? Or do you just want to ignore this externality until we pay it all at once?
> So, this is just number rearranging. The public pays either way.
"The public" isn't one person. Denmark has progressive taxes; getting rid of subsidies so prices of food increases changes who among the public pays.
> Or do you just want to ignore this externality until we pay it all at once?
> So, this is just number rearranging. The public pays either way.
"The public" isn't one person. Denmark has progressive taxes; getting rid of subsidies so prices of food increases changes who among the public pays.
> Or do you just want to ignore this externality until we pay it all at once?
I'm in favor of the carbon tax. I also think that it has complicated side effects and we should try to understand those effects, and see if we need to change something else to compensate for them.
We should simply ignore the externality all together because we're all paying for it anyway.
Either the subsidies take into account the carbon tax or they don't. If they do then it's number rearranging. Government gives dollars and then immediately takes some of them back, it's a convoluted appropriations bill. If they don't then food prices go up which is contrary to the government's goal of keeping food cheap at the point of sale.
If you want to reward reducing carbon emissions by giving additional dollars or paying for more expensive but better for the environment equipment then that could potentially be effective.
Trying to reduce a negative by pumping resources into a positive rarely works out as expected and often has surprisingly distortionary effects. (see ethanol and corn production in the USA)
I’m personally of the opinion we should be doing far more tying together of revenue neutral taxes and subsidies within an industry. When you want to reduce a negative externality you tax that and then redistribute the proceeds equitably back across relevant actors. When you want to increase a positive externality, you equally tax actors and then distribute it asymmetrically according to the behavior you want to encourage. Or combine the two approaches to address both negative and positive externalities in one go.
These approaches allow you to be more targeted, while minimizing overall market distortions.
It’s not exactly number rearranging, even if the government increases subsidy payments to offset the cost. E.g. say gasoline costs twice as much per gallon due to a carbon tax, but subsidies are increased proportionally to offset the cost increase so that food prices remain constant. This still creates an incentive for farmers to use “cleaner” forms of energy as the ones that do will increase their profit margins. Ultimately the increased subsidy is a burden on the tax payer, but in a more narrow sense carbon producing farms would be subsidizing some of the costs for farms that produce less carbon.
Whether this plays out as intended remains to be seen. I think externalities need to be priced in somehow, the issue is determining the appropriate cost. If you want the market to decide the cost efficiently there needs to be some mechanism to tie the two measures together (increased environmental quality => lower carbon tax rate). I agree however that manipulating the economics of food production is dangerous and needs to be done slowly and carefully.
give the carbon tax revenue to consumers to offset that the price of food now reflects it's true cost. people can still afford to eat and food producers would actually be incentivized to reduce emissions.
Specifically on reducing farmland. Denmark is intensly cultivated, and the reduction targets the lowest yield land that for various reasons were reclaimed over the last two centuries. Using the high yield land more efficiently is intended.
> A carbon tax will either drive up prices or reduce suppliers, increasing prices
Of if there is an equivalent subsidy (i.e. the tax is basically redistributed) it would encourage to produce less carbon/methane intensive production
So, what are you proposing? Just do nothing about climate change, as we have done before, and have worse social consequences in the near future rather than now? Denmark is more at risk from rising sea levels than other countries (https://cphpost.dk/2023-02-17/news/rising-sea-levels-threate...), so they want to do something about it.
The food needs to be produced somewhere. If denmark exports, then the food will be missing somewhere. So you do not fix "climate change". You only fix local effects of agriculture. I am not saying it is good or bad. But it def makes denmark poorer.
The idea that each country must culture every product to assure the supply chain is outdated by a generation in Europe.
A lot of those vegetables are produced yet in Almeria. A lot of milk that goes to Italy is produced in France. EU has this issue checked from the first minute and created a supranational agriculture system based on quotes.
Yes, and then somene comes and says, we produce too much beef... well yeah, somebody else will have to do it.
not OP, but how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation? the effect of taxing farmers as though they were some kind of vanity industry will be similar to what nationalizing farms has done in prior schemes like this.
it creates a national dependency on imported food from countries that do not bankrupt their farmers, and suddenly (shocked!) the entire Danish food supply crosses the borders to arrive and is then subject to federal management. this latter case is of course the purpose, and climate change is merely a pretext. I hope european farmers are able to organize a revolt.
> how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation
The history of solar, EVs, batteries etc. show these work hand in hand.
Why invent a way to capture methane from slurry, or form a business to sell that idea to farmers if they're allowed to pollute for free?
if methane were valuable, it would already exist, and there are a number of techs in development now: https://horsesport.com/magazine/farm-management/heating-with...
if you have a problem with farmers, maybe you should just eat less?
What technological innovation do you think farming could adopt, that it hasn't already...? They don't operate with simple machinery. They regularly use some of the most complicated systems that mankind can build, such as satellite systems, chemical analyses, etc.
Governance is needed, where progress does not occur naturally.
invent, not adopt. that's the difference between government and industry, government doesn't invent anything except problems to manage.
reality is, governments want smallholding farmers out of the business and to replace them with agribusinesses because it's a process of de-kulakizing their subjects. it has nothing to do with science or environment at all. I think maybe a war over this stuff will give us the reset we need.
Governments invent things, endlessly. The infrastructure you are communicating with me was invented by a government research department. The encryption we are using to ensure we're actually communicating with HN, is a government research project.
Similarly, the solar systems on most farms, was a government research project. The satellite recon to analyse the farm - provided by the government to all farmers, including the tiniest hobby farm, is 100% government researched, deployed, and maintained.
Governments do a lot more science than you are giving them credit for.
How will converting farmland to forests help with climate change? It seems like it would have no particular impact or make the situation worse w.r.t. climate change for Denmark. If it is a good idea I'd imagine it would also be a good idea if the climate was not changing.
Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions at all. In fact nobody does except ironically the Chinese and their industrial-growth-at-any-cost coal based approach from the 90s and 00s.
Land use is one of the big topics covered by the IPCC:
> how will converting farmland to forest
Farming is very carbon emission intensive if the farmland is reclaimed wetland. Converting the farmland to forest and stopping draining (making it more wet again) can definitely reduce carbon emissions significantly.
> Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions
This is such a tiresome and logically hollow argument. Denmark has the ability to reduce a fraction of the worlds emissions. The size of the fraction is proportional to the size of their emissions. Every country has a responsibility to reduce it's per capita emissions to sustainable levels. China has lower per capita emissions than most richer countries.
Note that China has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either.
Let’s split China population in k Denmark-sized groups, plus one smaller-than-Denmark reminder.
None of the k groups has any ability to impact global CO2 emissions (same as Denmark).
We can reasonably assume that a smaller group has even less ability to impact global CO2 emissions than a bigger group. Hence the smaller-than-Denmark reminder has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either.
Thus China is made of groups that have no ability to impact global CO2 emissions either. And therefore China as a whole has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions. (Otherwise at least one group within China would have to impact global emissions and we just saw that it isn’t possible).
This is known as the CO2 impossibility theorem, loosely based on Arrow’s concept of “(in)decisive” set.
Your logic is wrong - a Denmark sized group of Chinese people is probably all it takes to operate their solar panel producing factories.
The reason Denmark can't do anything isn't because there are few of them, it is because Denmark isn't a significant industrial cluster for energy technology and innovation. For example, India has more people than China and they aren't in a position to do much unless there is some sort of tech breakthrough that hasn't made it to my notice.
Denmark basically invented modern wind power and still makes a big chunk of it (though China has caught up in that area recently).
Fair enough, but the major point still stands - Denamrk's industrial policies that enable Vestas are the only way they can have a significant impact on climate change. Farmland conversion does nothing; it isn't moving the needle on what is economic and industrially scaleable. Everyone still needs to eat.
Certainly you are just demonstrating the opposite. Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions.
We certainly need international coordination or actors with a minimal set of morals to achieve it.
I think he was trying to demonstratea point with sarcasm and a group of one with him in it
> Everyone has the ability to impact global CO2 emmissions.
I'm afraid most people are smaller-than-Denmark groups, and thus unable whatsoever to impact global emissions. It's just math.
1e-10 is reeeallly close to zero, therefore 1e10 * 1e-10 is also close to zero.
That's what your math sounds like to me.
His math is x ~ 0, hence x / 10 = 0, hence x = NaN.
The starting point is just wrong that Denmark can't play a role when it comes to climate change. Denmark can make a change. It is like saying that when voting that no individual vote or county matters, when the opposite is true: every vote matters in the same way.
Every kg CO2 saved is good... (obviously we should strive for the most economic way to save CO2).
Isn't it true?
f = lambda x: (1/x) * x
f(1e309)
(So I guess Denmark is at least 1e309-sized in some metric).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the masses interpret these changes as “let them eat cake” given that inflation is already hammering the middle and lower classes.
in Denmark, inflation is currently running at a 1.6% annualized rate, as of the most recent reading[0]. This is the full basket inflation rate, including volatile categories (food and energy). Core inflation is even lower, with the latest reading at 1.3% (annualized) in October 2024. Food inflation is, of course, volatile. It currently sits at a moderately elevated level of 3.9% (October 2024, annualized).
Food prices declined earlier this year for two consecutive months, though that will be a minor consolation after the significant food price inflation in 2022 and persisting, though at a slower pace, through 2023.
All of that to say, "let them eat cake" mentality is unlikely in a country where they have consistently ranked at the top of a world happiness index. Additionally, while I'm not well versed in Danish politics, I am under the impression that the Social Democrats have responded much better to the mass immigration that has been an ongoing issue for many parties throughout Europe. I think this is indicative of a party that adapts rather more quickly to the consequences of their previous policies and is less ideologically stubborn - at least on some issues.
1.6% is the change in the CPI. The actual inflation is about 8%. There was a huge change in the CPI in 2022 or 2023, mostly attributed to sharply higher cost of energy.
I don't think you understand the numbers I listed. Read what I wrote again and try to think about the parts you don't understand, look them up, then read again.
Economists look at inflation on a month/month or year/year basis. This is not an accident as it purposely ignores the destructive cumulative effect of inflation.
Individuals, by contrast look at the cumulative effect of inflation. If inflation runs hot for several years and then comes back to a moderate level, prices don’t go down regardless of what economists would have you believe. The effect of inflation has memory.
Economists look at inflation in many, many ways. I don't think anyone that's reasonably well informed, especially economists, misunderstands the cumulative impact of price changes.
Economists that make monetary policy decisions look at recent inflation trends + projected inflation because they are tasked with price stability, which requires them to often respond to shocks well outside their control (war in Ukraine, massive government spending, tax cuts, covid-19 pandemic, etc.)
I was trading and researching fixed income and inflation markets (and implementing in multi-billion dollar portfolios) years ago when you had inflationistas claiming the Fed was going to cause double digit runaway inflation. At the same time, you had people claiming the Fed was not doing enough to support markets.
No matter what monetary policy makers do, it will be pretty much universally mocked by pundits and especially anyone that wants to talk their own book.
Academic economists don't really focus much on any particular reading of inflation, unless perhaps they have their own axe to grind about how it is measured or responded to.
Monetary policy can't change the past, which is why they evaluate current and expected inflation, not what happened in two years ago. Just because prices increased dramatically in 2022 does not mean the Fed or any other central bank should aim for deflation.
Denmark is a net exporter of food. In other words a net importer of agricultural pollution. So they could refice food exports without domestic political consequences. In theory.
We can debate the role of subsidies and carbon emissions, but framing agriculture as if it's uniquely nefarious misses the critical point that we all need to eat.
The industry isn't "choosing carbon" but rather it's responding to the immense challenge of feeding billions affordably while dealing with slim margins and unpredictable conditions. Adjustments require viable, scalable alternatives, not just finger-wagging.
I think we focus on supporting innovation rather than vilifying an essential industry.
If I can spend 100k on a tractor cause 100t of pollution or 200k on a tractor causing 50t of pollution I will obviously choose the firmer tractor as the rest of the world pays the price of the extra 50t of pollution.
If the externalities of that carbon generation are priced in I end up paying more for the polluting tractor so I choose the less polluting tractor and make more money.
For farmers today, the choice is more stark.
I can only speak to small and medium farms, but if we're talking large horsepower cultivators / row farming, It's really a choice between keep my old pre-emissions diesel/buy a pre-2006 used tractor from auctions/marketplace for 50k, or double down and lease a 250k-400k new mid-size tractor.
You make it seem like many farmers have choices, but old "dirty" tractors are the only financial options for many without signing up for indentured servitude to JD/Case/etc
So they externalise their costs and get other people to pay?
Who vilified it?
I do :-) Farming 2024 is so consolidated on few big operations, that a very small number of people have an inordinate amount of influence on how the major part of our total land area is managed and used. Most people who work in the danish farming industry are reduced to wage slaves who have zero influence on how things are run. In some ways, we are back to feudalism, in terms of lack of influence from the people who do most of the work.
It’s also important to note that, at least in this specific situation, the effects of those hidden subsidies are extremely regressive.
I think we should start doing more taxes combined with subsidies. Give everyone a $1/t carbon tax. Give everyone a ~$1/t farming subsidy based on current carbon production. Nobody loses, but everyone is incentivized to decrease carbon production and the faster ones profit more. Phase out the subsidy over X years if you like.
Otherwise, you’re right. We’re upsetting the balance of a very complex, very important system and causing a regressive tax in the form of price increases.
a combined tax and subsidy to try to drive farmers into more sustainable practices in a fiscally neutral way isn't a bad idea, but I think it is just a very risky and necessary roll of the dice.
I think inevitably, there will be price increases. The questions is just how bad and how many farms survive the transition.
You misunderstand, driving small farms out of businness so they can be taken over by Gates and other big farming monopolies is the real goal not an unwanted side effect.
a casual American perspective here -- it is easy to mistake the cause when an effect is obvious. Yes, coordinated market regulation ends up increasing consolidation (with capital). Not everyone thinks this is a bad thing. No, it is not a plot by a few powerful individuals (easy to imagine, convenient emotional target). Rather there are "policy levers" and economic forces that operate at once, and interact in complicated ways.
Carbon taxes are by far the most effective way to get down CO₂ emissions.
But I'm doubtful that implementing them only for one industry in one small country is very helpful.
I disagree, carbon taxes seem to be the best way to ensure your country starts to outsource all of it's carbon producing activity to less developed countries who do a worse job containing their emissions. This has been happening in europe for quite some time with the manufacturing of their wind turbines iirc. It's a super carbon heavy emission to produce them, so the europeans have them made elsewhere to make it look like their emissions are super low, which is essentially a lie for politicians to sell environment-crazed voters.
A carbon tax needs to be global to fully work, for reasons like this.
That is of course impossible, so there is some tension there :)
Right. Why not carbon tax all industries (and imports), then subsidize select essentials like pumping water and growing agricultural goods?
> It is going to sidle a cost to an industry of razor thin margins.
Will it or will farmland value take a dump but remain unchanged in use?
I always thought of farmland these days as a use of last resort and if it could be marketable for buildings, it’s already not economically worth it as a farm except speculatively
In the U.K. farmland has a rental value of about £100 an acre but a purchase price over £10k an acre.
The value in the land isn’t in its use (which is getting 1% ROI), but in speculation it may be granted permission to be converted to housing, or because of tax loopholes.
The owner also get capital appreciation / depreciation of the land - ~5.7 per cent per annum over the last 100 years bring the total return to a 6.7% ROI.
Land at the edge of cities and towns where there is a reasonable chance of development happening costs orders of magnitude more than the average.
The person renting that land then farms it (presumably for a profit) for additional ROI.
Yes, this came up in the recently closed inheritance tax loophole; people were buying "family farms" purely to leave to their children while doing the minimum of farming.
Yes speculation and tax avoidance. Neither of which are behaviours we want to encourage.
It should be fine, I believe. Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output. So a shift from meat to other food crops would be a net win, even as it frees up land for other purposes.
Many farmers will receive a one-time payment on land sales and some will use this windfall to subsidise their transition from growing livestock to more environmentally-friendly food.
>Just in terms of land-use, livestock is several times less efficient than other kinds of agriculture for the same food output.
This assumes that the land is equally usable for both activities. Many times, it isn't: a lot of land that's good enough for grazing cows doesn't have enough water available for growing plants that people want to (or can) eat. People can't eat grass.
This probably isn't an issue in Denmark, but in many other places it is.
Cows still need water from somewhere in those areas you’re talking about. If the land is particularly poor it also won’t produce enough feed and will have to be supplemented with feed that requires water and energy to grow somewhere else.
Cows are extremely inefficient (2% conversion) at converting calories to meat, so putting cows on that land is also an inefficient use of that land. And land with bad yield for crops also has bad yield for cows and the grass they eat and the water they need. I don't see the proposition being made in these claims.
Cows are so inefficient that we don't need to use marginal land at all to grow food. The majority of arable land is already used for cows yet they produce a disproportionately small amount of food. Weening off cows is a good thing.
You do it then. I like my beef and milk, and I don't care if they use up the land or produce methane.
Dairy cows convert calories to milk at over 24% efficiency. And you still get the meat.
It also ignores that animals produce the manure that is used to fertilize soil to grow crops in.
We use manure because it's coming out of the gills of the animal ag industry, not because it's necessary to enrich crop soil.
Just because plastic bags are ubiquitous doesn't mean it's the only nor best way to carry items around, nor that we'd lose the ability to transport goods if they were phased out, nor that they don't come at a cost despite perceiving them as free.
> We use manure because it's coming out of the gills of the animal ag industry, not because it's necessary to enrich crop soil
Crop soil needs fertilizer somehow
What is your alternative to manure?
Bonus points if it uses less energy to produce than animals, produces less CO2 than animals, takes up less space than animals, or also produces food at the same time
Done any farming lately? You would not get enough yield to feed people without fertilizer. Of course it can be produced from a source different from manure. Nitrogen-based fertilizer is produced from cheap natural gas... oh wait... that is gone,too.
Depends on the type of agriculture? If it make veggies cheaper in comparison to meat, I'm all for it. Hopefully it spurs development of sustainable nice tasting protein sources ;) (like synthetic meat etc.)
I would imagine growing vegetables could be carbon negative, literally making vegetables out of carbon from out of the air?
This is exactly what should not happen. Meat is great, especially when grass fed.
... unless the "meat" being grass-fed is actually cows, which produce lots of methane. Not so good for climate change, at least if done at scale.
It's never that easy as "Meat is great".
I can’t believe this is a real problem. Refineries are bombed and stay on fire for days, some places in the world light on fire rubbish all the time, plenty of inefficiencies in heating, transportation, etc.. and the problem is.. cow farts.. yes sure
If you actually measure it, then yes.
https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/492...
"Total GHG emissions from livestock supply chains are estimated at 7.1 gigatonnes CO2 -eq per annum for the 2005 reference period. They repre- sent 14.5 percent of all human-induced emissions using the most recent IPCC estimates for total an- thropogenic emissions (49 gigatonnes CO 2 -eq for the year 2004; IPCC, 2007)"
Surprisingly there are fewer cows than people, but there's still a billion cows, and a billion of anything adds up quickly.
That's not to say that the other things aren't important as well. Gas flaring from refineries is a pure waste that should be drastically curtailed.
Cow farts being harmful for the environment is the silliest hoax I see repeated over and over.
Spending two minutes reading about the biogenic carbon cycle destroys this misconception.
I read about the Biogenic Carbon Cycle on the UC Davis website:
"As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch out methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat the plants and the cycle begins once again. In essence, the methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. Rather it is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon cycle."
According to that logic, burning fossil fuels also is not harmful for the environment, because the CO2 eventually gets consumed by plants.
> According to that logic, burning fossil fuels also is not harmful for the environment, because the CO2 eventually gets consumed by plants.
No, the difference in logic is based on the source of the CO2. Fossile fuels are burried in the ground and are not part of the carbon cycle. By removing them from the ground, we are adding new carbon to the carbon cycle rather. Coversely, if you burn wood, that carbon was (mostly) going to end back up in the carbon cycle and you've just sped up it's cycle and increased the portion of the cycling carbon that is in the atmosphere.
There are changes we can make to the cycle that do affect global warming (cutting down all the forests and killing all the kelp would greatly decrease the capacity of the cycle). Conversely, we can expand the carbon cycle by planting trees (that actually survive and form forests.)
However, you can't fix global warming by expanding the carbon cycle because you can't scale the natural cycle to match all the new carbon that is being added to it by buring fossile fuels. There are only two solutions, adding less carbon to the cycle by burning fewer fossile fuels and finding ways to remove carbon from the cycle by sequeresting it in long term ways.
Carbon taxes can fail to actually cause change if they allow fossil fuel burning to be offset by temporary bumps to the carbons cycle capacity because this doesn't really solve the problem and at best slightly delay it.
Cow "farts" (actually burps) are kinda the opposite, the methane is already part of the carbon cycle. However methane is a way more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 so by increasing amount of carbon cycle that is amospheric methane you are accelerating global warming until the methane decays into CO2.
Unfortunately powerplants dont graze on a field of grass
A few of things:
1) Even if cows would only eat the grass that was there (and we would not have converted any forest or other vegetation into grazing lands), the methane and CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time before being used by plants again, contributing to the greenhouse effect in that time. The reality is, we can only cover a very small percentage of the demand with this "3 happy cows on a vast pasture" phantasy. Most cow feed is planted additionally, often in countries like Brazil, and then fed to the cows.
2) The carbon impact is not the only negative impact of the scale of livestock agriculture we run these days. As it says in the article, another big impact is eutrophication of water bodies.
3) Just basic physics: Livestock agriculture, especially beef, is a very inefficient way of producing protein and calories. Have a look at this data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
So, please don't come at me with your cute comments. The reality is that we have too much livestock agriculture. It's not sustainable to feed 8 billion people like this. The scientific consesus is clear on this.
The data you present again doesn't take the lifecycle into account. Also worth pointing out that protein bioavailability and amino acid profiles are ignored.
Unrelated but since you brought the topic up, it would of course make sense that releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere that took millions of years to bind into the earth in mere decades might be a bad idea. Then again, we're only guessing there as well. We have no clue if the world will be better or worse for us to live in 50 years, and how much of it will be attributable to CO2.
But I digress -- this comment thread was about cow farts and the utter silliness of grasping at such straws when speaking about an otherwise serious subject like the futures of our children.
> Then again, we're only guessing there as well.
Umm, no, we are not guessing. But I see where this will end, so let's stop this discussion right here.
Yea, I imagine you’d link some projections 50 years into the future, and I’d call you a moron for believing in such things. You’ve already branded me a climate change denier in your head so that wouldn’t serve you well in a serious discussion.
It’s a bold move, but like you, I’m not sure the potential consequences have been fully addressed
> it's actually a CO2-equivalent (CO2e) tax, which includes a range of other gasses. E.g., 1kg of methane is 25kg CO2e
Your pig farmers must be thrilled.
It comes with quite a lot of compensation and subsidies, so they're less angry than you might expect. Also, an important note here is that they were part of the negotiations, and as such were part of the agreement which was proposed to the parliament.
All that being said, you're right, they're not exactly thrilled with the government adding taxes and monitoring them more.
> It comes with quite a lot of compensation and subsidies, so they're less angry than you might expect.
Do people really still buy this trick?
Agriculture has been subsidized for security and stability reasons for a very long time - this isn't a trick it's the status quo ex ante.
Subsidies will be cut by a future government so it's all fine :D
They've tried to avoid this by doing the negotiations between the government and interest organizations from all sides. The most surprising part of all this is really that these organizations, which included the main agricultural lobby organizations and the main nature preservation organizations, managed to sit down together and come to an agreement. This agreement was then proposed to the parliament, which voted it through with a broad coalition from both sides. So, that should ideally make it somewhat resilient to changing governments. Of course, that's not a guarantee, but at least it should be more solid than most of these political agreements :)
So you tax them for CO2 and then subsidize them for the same reason?
How does help anyone else than salaries for tax and subsidy administrators?
Not exactly. I'll just copy a reply I made further down: in 2030, a tax will be introduced of 120 DKK (~16€) / ton CO2e, which linearly increases each year until it reaches 300 DKK (~40€) / ton CO2e in 2035. However, the farmers can get subsidies for changing their practices and adopting new technologies, in order to reduce their emissions. I.e., the government will give you money to change your production, so you can minimize the carbon taxes you have to pay. There are more technicalities to how it works, but that's the gist of it. The important part is that the goal is to transition to new technologies and production methods, which reduces emissions per unit food produced.
Without having read the legislation, the two aren't necessarily contradictory. They only are if the subsidy mechanically increases with the tax.
A "climate income" is a good example of that. Everyone gets taxed by usage/pollution, but the collected tax gets redistributed evenly.
That way, on average there is no extra taxation, in fact it's typically a redistribution from top to bottom. And yet every individual will end up with more money the less they pollute. It's that individual incentive that makes the measure effective, but it's the redistribution that makes it socially acceptable (if implemented correctly)
It gets legislation that people in general want (better rivers and streams, healthier sea ecosystem) passed, by subsidizing the changes required for the people those changes negatively affect.
Is it ideal? maybe not, but it is the real world.
Ideally, you gradually ramp down the subsidies, to give folks a gentle offramp.
I had to look it up, Denmark is allegedly a world leader in pig farming exports. You make a really interesting point that I feel like garners more discourse.
https://agricultureandfood.dk/danish-agriculture/agriculture....
There's a great few episodes on this in Borgen where the PMs paramour goes to the hospital because there are so many hormones pumped into Danish pigs and how powerful the industry is in the country.
Denmark is also THE world leader in pork consumption.
This doesn't seem to be true. In 2002 it appeared to be true, but the way it was calculated was by calculating the full mass of pigs produced and subtracting the amount exported. This didn't take into account that exports tended not to include heavy bones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...
More recent data shows thir pork consumption as nothing noteworthy, though I have no idea how good the data is https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pork-cons...
Confusion? I skimmed the headline and saw that they were planting "eighteen" trees. We need better fonts.
> introduction of a carbon tax for the entire agricultural industry
Polish farmers are going to eat you alive for this.
"They're in Danish, but upload them to Claude or ChatGPT, and you'll have a much better source"
Eh, people don't know that Google Translate can translate documents (PDF, Doc etc.) as well?!
So effectively offshoring carbon production to places that don’t care?
No. The document spells out that denmark intends to remain a "strong" producer of agricultural products by increasing the yield from other, less ecologically damaging, farming areas.
You should read the introduction.
They write these things all the time while continually outsourcing their carbon emissions to other countries. Follow the supply chains.