Land Plan
September 16, 2019
A friend recently posed a question to me: When humanity lives in cities, vertical farms make 50% of our food, and land use for cattle decreases… what do we do with all the land that remains?
[Disclaimer: this is a draft]
Proposal
The plan
Mass reforestation across the U.S.
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Establish large-scale vertical farming. Target leafy greens, fruits, and lintels (economically feasible parts of carbon-friendly diet we’ll all shift to[0]). Shift away from meat-based diet means upper limit of 650 acres of land reclaimed for other purposes.[1]
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Companies that replace cow-based food capture significant portions of market. Dairy[7] and meat[8] products are already on market.
3? Reduce subsidies for traditional farms, starting with crops supporting cattle production. Reduced subsities + next gen farming = more farms go out of business. Drives population towards urban centers?
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Mass US buy-back of recently depopulated land. Total land valuation of US is $23 trillion, extremely unevenly distributed. $5t spend paid out over 30 years would go far). Alternatively, financial incentives @ 20% ($1t) of property value reforested. Could redeploy farming subsidy savings in (2) to pay for (3) to the tune of $20b annually.
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Begin rapid deployment of forests to offset yearly emissions. Price to deploy 1 trillion trees is $300b w/ current tech. Could plant ~300-400b trees in US (lower-upper limit).
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In mass buy-back scenario, now that government owns land… now we build trains? Less need for eminent domain, make remaining infra carbon cheap. Most fuel efficient form of transport.
Impact
Total impact: ~80 gigatonnes of carbon directly captured in the trees… plus some strong network effects (unestimated) by keeping areas green + wet. 80gt = 10% of all emissions by humans since 1870. Would buy humanity another decade. Worldwide potential of 205gt carbon captureable by this strategy (lower bound).
Questions
What is the upper limit on % of US cropland replaceable by crops grown by vertical farms? Question comes down to amount of vertical farming
With no land buyback and no agricultural practice changes, how much reforestation could we start with now? How much would that land cost, if it’s not productively being used?
How fast is humanity urbanizing?
What has the biggest impact on rural land prices? What drives it up or down?
Sources
[1][https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/#targettext=the 48 contiguous states alone,value for business and pleasure](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/#targetText=The%2048%20contiguous%20states%20alone,value%20for%20business%20and%20pleasure).
[0][https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plant-focused-diet-would-transform-planets-future-say-scientists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plant-focused-diet-would-transform-planets-future-say-scientists)
[2][https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76)
[3][https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/16/1m-a-minute-the-farming-subsidies-destroying-the-world](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/16/1m-a-minute-the-farming-subsidies-destroying-the-world)
[4][https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/04/23/fun-number-the-us-is-worth-23-trillion-or-why-a-land-value-tax-wont-work/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/04/23/fun-number-the-us-is-worth-23-trillion-or-why-a-land-value-tax-wont-work/)
[5] Public Surveys on Climate Change Opinion https://www.rff.org/energy-and-climate/surveying-american-attitudes-toward-climate-change-and-clean-energy/
[6] Climate Now https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02734-x
[7][https://www.perfectdayfoods.com/](https://www.perfectdayfoods.com/)
[8][https://www.memphismeats.com/](https://www.memphismeats.com/). $100/pound currently.
Response
I buy all the steps except for the farming subsidies — I suspect step 1 will outcompete traditional farms and ranches on a level playing field, but getting subsidies removed (or even maintained, rather than increased) will run up against a system of government that’s biased toward large, sparsely-populated Western states [1].
A smaller problem is the geographic mobility question. Despite increasing economic power of cities, American mobility (particularly interstate mobility) has been decreasingsince the late-80s [2]. So, perhaps steps 2a and 2b are remove the electoral college and provide resettlement incentives to people in the areas we’d like to reforest. Although, your argument about reforestation incentives might address resettlement by providing effectively the same thing as mineral rights to landowners. A trained population to maintain these superforests might help prevent wildfires that would likely occur due to climate activity in addition to the increased wood mass.
Sources
[2]: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geographic-mobility/historic.html
Proposal
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Superforest maintenance as a profession is worth another full discussion. Lots of promise there, but also a lot of open questions about what those jobs would look like and what they would pay. Africa and China both have attempted “great green wall” projects with varying levels of success. Both were focused on fighting desertification and arguably failed, but created jobs and auxiliary value in the process.
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As you pointed out, forest fire season is going to get more brutal over time; with higher portions of population in forested areas it will be dangerous and deadly. I researched for a while here; there’s a surprising lack of literature on forest designs that are fire resistant.
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Your pushback on subsidies is right. Keeping existing subsidies in place prevents bad PR (“liberals want to take farmers’ jobs away”)
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Finally… Are there any viable paths toward abolishing the electoral college and (gulp) rebalancing the Senate? Electoral college abolition seems to have political momentum and feels possible in the next 4 years, but Senate would be a deathblow to GOP as implemented. Greater urban power accelerates this plan.
Written by Brent Baumgartner. He lives and works in Charlottesville at TwinThread, building data-driven products. You should follow him on Twitter