Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm of the opinion food security - even at great expense - is the primary thing a nation should be concerned with as a society. At the level where producing enough calories to feed your total population if things truly hit the fan as a hard requirement for every nation on the planet. This is not something you leave to "free trade" or whatnot. Obviously that doesn't mean every calorie need be provided in the most luxurious form - but in the end, there should be enough food produced to feed your people in the worst of times. Even at great expense and waste during the good times.

That all said - farming has gotten vastly more productive both per man hour and per acre over the past 100 years. Logically we simply do not need the same amount of land devoted to agriculture as we did before - at least in most cases.

So long as your food security is not being impacted - and I do mean under the worst possible stress model you can come up with - I don't see a problem with plans like this. Land use changes over time, and it should be expected.

Plus, it looks like a large portion of this will be simply a different form of agriculture - forestry. This will probably be more in-demand in 50-100 years with current trends, but that's a wild guess.

Read the post by gklitz: Agricultural practices are ruining the water supply. It's nice to have food security, but you also need drinkable water.

Groundwater in Denmark is drinkable and most people wanna keep it that way. But unfortunately, fertilizer has killed of huge areas of sealife.

The argument about security comes up a lot and makes intuitive sense. Although it seems far more complex than just protecting farmland and a simple yearly statistic. Developed countries can be ridiculously dependent on centralised supply chains to process and deliver food. And many of the inputs and equipment require a complex industrial base to support. We don't just need the space to grow food. We need to feed it, protect it from pests, harvest it, process it, deliver it to people. In most countries Iit is very dependent on electricity, heavy industry and global trade for equipment.

> That all said - farming has gotten vastly more productive both per man hour and per acre over the past 100 years

We also have way more people to feed and house than 100 years ago, you cannot look at productivity increase in isolation, demand for both food and land has also risen significantly.

Denmark is not even close to jeopardizing its food supply, even less its food security. It produces way more food than is needed to feed its own population.

> Denmark is not even close to jeopardizing its food supply, even less its food security. It produces way more food than is needed to feed its own population.

Denmark is a part of the EU. Their agricultural policy follows EU's common agricultural policy. Food security is evaluated accounting for all members, not individual member-states in isolation. In case of a scenario that puts food security at risk, such as an all-out war, it's in her best interests of all member states if the whole Europe can preserve it's food security.

If we are ever in a situation where food security becomes a real issue in the EU - and that’s an almost unfathomably big if - then the first step would be to actually grow food for humans, instead of food for animals that are then exported to China as meat products.

Food security is simply not a relevant concern here.

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