Amazon Investing $4 Billion - Setting up A Datacentre Region in Calgary

[#-3]

Originally Posted by 81MC

90% of America’s crop land is gmo, majority of which is used for livestock feed. It sure as #### is not organic produce eaters that are leading ‘land waste’ (as if actually growing food that goes into our mouths is land ‘waste’.)

I think your stats are off a little bit, there are only like 12 crops that have approved GMOs on the market, 90% of those crops are GMOs, but all of the other cultivars are 100% not GMO. Also Non-GMO and Organic are different distinctions, even if both them are pure marketing nonsense.

I just mean if you're going after solar, because of "land use", in scare quotes because everyone knows you are just pulling at straws to find an attack to fit your narrative. Then you need to look squarely the BS marketing ploys we all constantly suffer from like organic food.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2...hful-thinking/

At the end of the day we need to be smart to maintain the lifestyle we would like to maintain, we need to do more with less everywhere. We need more food with less water, less fertilizer, less land, waste of land is an unfortunate word, but what we need is to conserve land.

We need more energy with less lifetime extraction cost, the way things are going that is largely going to look like big upfront capital expenses of renewables tech with very low marginal generation cost, like wind, solar or nuclear. Saying that solar is a waste of land isn't going to get us there, because in terms of energy generation it's an effective use of land, and we have pretty easy ready to use methods of clawing back that land from agriculture, like getting rid of the tens of millions of hectares of organic farms.

[Samonadreau]

Originally Posted by #-3

I think your stats are off a little bit, there are only like 12 crops that have approved GMOs on the market, 90% of those crops are GMOs, but all of the other cultivars are 100% not GMO. Also Non-GMO and Organic are different distinctions, even if both them are pure marketing nonsense.

I just mean if you're going after solar, because of "land use", in scare quotes because everyone knows you are just pulling at straws to find an attack to fit your narrative. Then you need to look squarely the BS marketing ploys we all constantly suffer from like organic food.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2...hful-thinking/

At the end of the day we need to be smart to maintain the lifestyle we would like to maintain, we need to do more with less everywhere. We need more food with less water, less fertilizer, less land, waste of land is an unfortunate word, but what we need is to conserve land.

We need more energy with less lifetime extraction cost, the way things are going that is largely going to look like big upfront capital expenses of renewables tech with very low marginal generation cost, like wind, solar or nuclear. Saying that solar is a waste of land isn't going to get us there, because in terms of energy generation it's an effective use of land, and we have pretty easy ready to use methods of clawing back that land from agriculture, like getting rid of the tens of millions of hectares of organic farms.

You will have to enlighten me on why organic farms are a waste of land.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Samonadreau

You will have to enlighten me on why organic farms are a waste of land.

I did link an article.

Basically they made up some stuff that has no meaningful impact on the final product as an appeal to nature marketing tactic, but prevents them from using more efficient methods of farming. So they have lower yields, higher waste, more water use, they dig into the soil more often, and use less effective but more toxic methods of pest mitigation. For all of these reasons they get less food out of more land, meaning the "waste" land.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

to give folks an idea of the amount of area, here is a map of Calgary's recent (oct 2021) annexation request for some 4000 acres / 1600 hectares

https://www.rockyview.ca/Portals/0/F...d-Area-Map.png

(note: a previous version had me describing the mapped area as 4000 hectares)

12 square kms is 4.5 square miles, so 4.5 sections.

A little bit bigger than the properties in NE calgary - whitehorn,temple, rundle, and pineridge.

[81MC]

Originally Posted by #-3

I think your stats are off a little bit, there are only like 12 crops that have approved GMOs on the market, 90% of those crops are GMOs, but all of the other cultivars are 100% not GMO. Also Non-GMO and Organic are different distinctions, even if both them are pure marketing nonsense.

I just mean if you're going after solar, because of "land use", in scare quotes because everyone knows you are just pulling at straws to find an attack to fit your narrative. Then you need to look squarely the BS marketing ploys we all constantly suffer from like organic food.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2...hful-thinking/

At the end of the day we need to be smart to maintain the lifestyle we would like to maintain, we need to do more with less everywhere. We need more food with less water, less fertilizer, less land, waste of land is an unfortunate word, but what we need is to conserve land.

We need more energy with less lifetime extraction cost, the way things are going that is largely going to look like big upfront capital expenses of renewables tech with very low marginal generation cost, like wind, solar or nuclear. Saying that solar is a waste of land isn't going to get us there, because in terms of energy generation it's an effective use of land, and we have pretty easy ready to use methods of clawing back that land from agriculture, like getting rid of the tens of millions of hectares of organic farms.

You're right, that 90% is probably high and overly simplistic. It's tellingly difficult to find specifics without going through the USDA census. But lets look at Soybean, Corn and Cotton who are reportedly the largest crops.
Only a third of corn grown is actually used to feed human beings and we all know that includes every thing from corn on the cob to corn flakes to corn syrup. Only 15% of Soybean crops are used for human food, and this is typically reserved for that conventional or organic market.

That's less than a third of the largest crops in the America directly feeding people. Most of the remainder goes to feed livestock. I won't get into here, but you can investigate. Visually, 20% of cropland is food people eat ('food' used loosely).

As far as sustainability?
Cotton producers increasingly using 'stacked' trait (more than one GE trait) maybe because, the glyphosate stopped being effective, despite increasing its use and the pattern of increased Dicamba resistant crops isn't limited to cotton. As GE crop adoption increased, somehow producers see negative net returns, struggling to cover overhead. Cropland growth, led by corn and soybeans (which are 90%+ GE) under yield and risk wildlife.

So, at best, GE crops are the majority of cropland. Most of that does not feed humans directly, and what does includes oils, sugars, and syrups. We continue to destroy at risk wildlife habitats to plant GE crops that are requiring stronger herbicides, so that we can feed livestock. More land is used for livestock than growing human food. More food growing land is used to feed livestock than humans. And non-ge or organic food stuffs is the land issue?

[Strange Brew]

In somewhat unrelated news, Amazon stock up $147 today.

[#-3]

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GE crops use most of the land because the produce most of the product. It nice that mid conversation we've changed the distinction in the conversation from GMO to the more inclusive GE tag when called out on faulty statistics in order to try and trip each other up. You are basically making the same argument antivaxers make when they say most covid cases are amongst the vaccinated now.

We are stacking traits so that we don't need to use the glyphosate, and other similar yet unmentioned pesticides that have not become public boogie men. Crops with the genes to produce natural pesticides are far superiors, add drawf genes that don't waste energy growing tall stocks, and drought resistant genes that allow them to bounce back from dry periods, finds seeds that germinate easily so that you don't have to turn all of the moisture and carbon out of the soil just to get the seed in there. Suddenly you are stacking up the traits we need to reduce land use. Which takes us back to the source of our conversation, worrying about solar panels taking up farmland is a drop in the bucket compared to the land we waste on BS ideas like "natural" farming.

Your claim that GE is eroding margins is a loose correlation at best, with many extenuating variables, like climate or trade policy. What you would need is to directly pair up changes in profitability between farms that have stayed up to date with current technologies and farms that have stay consistently organic within the same local regions, bench mark those changes against market prices. That way you would be able to see if those changes were a result of conditions outside of production method, or if they were due to market conditions like successfully capturing and overcharging a wealthy and uninformed corner of the market.

All things being equal if there was one environmental policy I would love to get behind, it would be rewilding. But I don't think that is even within the realm of idea space yet, especially if we cannot get past he antiGM / organic farm movements. The circles we go in to get nowhere are also a little funny. We'd be ok to grow organic if we only grow food crops because food crops are only using 20% of the arable land. Organic can only use natural fertilizer like cow ####. Where'd the nitrogen in that cow poop come from? that's right chemical fertilizers. So now we're still using the land to raise the cows, to get the chemical nitrogen fertilizer onto the ground in a more natural way.

[GGG]

And chemical nitrogen fixing is more or less responsible for increasing earths carrying capacity.

So maybe the solution to global warming is Organic Farming because people will starve and then we will have less pollution.

Wizard and the prophet is a fantastic book discussing this.

[#-3]

Once again, I might have derailed this, good on Amazon for actively pursuing solar power, that is not a waste of farm land, especially when you compare it to the other ways we waste land.

[81MC]

I link directly to several USDA articles and a study published in Nature, a premier scientific journal and I’m arguing like an antivaxxer? The GLP sure has some gravitas I guess.
I used GE because I presume that’s what you’re actually referring to, despite their relative interchangeability in common parlance, and what most anti GMOers are probably truly against. Not to trip anyone up.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by 81MC

I link directly to several USDA articles and a study published in Nature, a premier scientific journal and I’m arguing like an antivaxxer? The GLP sure has some gravitas I guess.
I used GE because I presume that’s what you’re actually referring to, despite their relative interchangeability in common parlance, and what most anti GMOers are probably truly against. Not to trip anyone up.

Your saying they take up most of that land, but that's because they account for most of the production. Hot tip, if all crops were GE, 100% of crop land would be GE.