US land use per the USDA.

[Irving]

Ran across this article that breaks down land use in the lower 48 per the USDA. Thought it was interesting enough to share.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...mpId=flipboard

[Sawin]

That is pretty interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[mattiooo]

Awesome share. Interesting facts and a really cool presentation.

[brutal]

Someone doesn't like cows.

Here's one that's shocking, "More than a third of the entire corn crop is devoted to ethanol production."

A fleecing of America.

[buffalobo]

Interesting but detect an agenda I don't agree with and question the accuracy.

[GilpinGuy]

Someone doesn't like cows.

Here's one that's shocking, "More than a third of the entire corn crop is devoted to ethanol production."

A fleecing of America.

Yeah, screw the starving people in the world. Let's pretend ethanol is a better fuel source and will save the polar bears.

[Irving]

What's the agenda? I could see many directions to go. Might not be any agenda at all, if there a lot of cows, there are a lot of cows. They should include chickens though, of which there are more.

I heard a guy on NPR the other day saying how Nebraska alone grows more food than the country can eat, so exports are important (he was against the trade war). That Nebraska grows more than we can eat sounds unbelievable and I wonder if it is true.

[brutal]

What's the agenda? I could see many directions to go. Might not be any agenda at all, if there a lot of cows, there are a lot of cows. They should include chickens though, of which there are more.

I heard a guy on NPR the other day saying how Nebraska alone grows more food than the country can eat, so exports are important (he was against the trade war). That Nebraska grows more than we can eat sounds unbelievable and I wonder if it is true.

Corn subsidies keep prices artificially high and raise the costs of many corn based food products. It costs nearly DOUBLE to produce a gallon of ethanol fuel vs. Gasoline. Ethanol is a negative BTU energy source.

[Irving]

I think depending on who reads the article, will depend on what they think the agenda is.

[Aloha_Shooter]

"Gathered together, cropland would take up more than a fifth of the 48 contiguous states. Pasture and rangeland would cover most of the Western U.S., and all of the country’s cities and towns would fit neatly in the Northeast."

So what? The cropland is necessary to support everything else going on.

"Even though urban areas make up just 3.6 percent of the total size of the 48 contiguous states, four in five Americans live, work and play there. With so much of the U.S. population in urban areas, it’s little surprise that these areas contribute an outsize amount to the economy. The 10 most productive metropolitan areas alone contributed to about 40 percent of U.S. GDP in 2016."

I guess that depends on your definition of productivity. High fashion design, making movies, etc. certainly is more profitable and is a larger part of the economy when you only look at total dollars but that's basically because farmers have generally gotten screwed for millennia. None of the so-called urban economic activity occurs if they don't have anything to eat. HUGE urban bias in these slides. Fact of the matter is that the 10 largest urban areas in the country could just disappear and the rest of the country would find a way to get along. Get rid of the 10 largest food-producing areas in the country and the rest goes to hell.