[Robotbeat]

That “cow pasture/range” chunk is largely extremely low productivity scrub land owned by the federal government and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could convert all of it to national parks without much more than a blip in food calories produced in the US.

As far as actually farmed land, productivity has increased by an order of magnitude, MUCH faster than population, so we actually farm less land than in the 40s in spite of having a much larger population that eats more. We burn that corn in our cars, for goodness sake. The land area use for ethanol corn in our country is more than enough area to convert the entire nation’s electric production to solar.

Corn yields: https://extension.entm.purdue.edu/newsletters/pestandcrop/wp...

[OrbitRock]

> That “cow pasture/range” chunk is largely extremely low productivity scrub land owned by the federal government and leased basically for free by cattle folk. We could convert all of it to national parks without much more than a blip in food calories produced in the US.

Agreed!

I would emphasize restoration and protection in almost every case.

Just that there’s also ways we can work towards conservation on land that is being utilized too.

You talked about farms but there’s also: managed forests, anywhere anything is grazing, private lands, fisheries, artificial reefs and kelp forests, any area we already use which we can also stack on an incidental conservation benefit ontop of (as you mentioned renewable energy infrastructure will be a big one, the book I mention is full of other surprising examples such as military bases), things like wildlife underpasses, suburban lawns, and so on. This adds up to a lot of land.

I hope we protect half of the land and ocean like Edward O. Wilson and other major biologists recommend, but also I think it’s smart to look at everything and not just protected areas.

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, military bases is definitely one area... I'm thinking of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, which are both launchports AND nature reserves... and another one is nuclear power plants.

I hate mowing the lawn. I actually prefer the typical "weeds" like clover and dandelion over the typical grass. Dumb that we basically mandate weird, chemical and labor-intensive grass monoculture.

I actually think about 90% of the land ought to become basically national parks and/or protected wilderness. Maybe even more. We can live in dense cities in absolute luxury and abundance (with 10,000 square foot condos... why not? multiple stories make it possible) and then those of us who like to can go camping on the weekends. Traveling by electric motorgliders to our weekend campsite. Cars only underground (but everyone has one still).

[telchar]

Some of that cow pasture/range land used to be better land, and has been degraded by bad farming techniques and/or overgrazing. The area around Pipe Springs, Utah for example, was significantly more lush 150 years ago, and now it's scrub land. It would be a mistake to think of land as static and only fit for a limited set of purposes, and to therefore exploit it without concern for what it is or could turn into (for better or worse).

We're also causing top soil to erode and blow away in much of the corn belt [0]. That productivity has a cost and shouldn't be assumed.

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-say...

edit: I don't think we disagree, much. I'll leave the above for reference.