different thoughts

[cswilson]

Cowman I'm sitting on and calving out 190 heifers that I didn't get sold lol. Maybe I better get fittted for that dunce cap-I wonder some days lol.

[Horse]

Grassfarmer that is the biggest lie ever told that they arnt making any more land . In the past 30 yr they have pushed the frontier back and opened up millions of acres take for example the land west and north of REd Deerit used to stop at leslivele and didnt go more than a few miles north of Rockey only a few small lumber operations now look at it Droyton valey was a big mud hole with oil under it Manning I worked on the railroad in 62 it was all swamp and bears now millions of acres high level was not on the map and so on so you see they are making more land . Go to Brazil or allmost anywhere and land is being made .

[grassfarmer]

You have got to realise how limited the potential to expand is surely? Yes there are a few places in the world where land is being cleared but farmland is being depleted, eroded and abandoned around the world quicker than new stuff is being cleared. Then take the urban sprawl that covers huge areas every year not to mention all the areas to be set aside for "wildlife corridors" and leisure activities and you realise how quickly we are running out of land. Today we feed a world population of 5.7 billion where we fed only 3 billion in 1960 - this is projected to rise to 8 billion by 2050. Ok, you can argue we are technically creating farmland where there was none before but the expression I used meant that the world wasn't getting any bigger

[cakadu]

One also has to take into consideration what this land that is being cleared is actually going to produce.

If it is going to be forced chemically to produce relatively marginal crops at best, then what is the point in trying to open it up? There might very well be a reason it was left to scrub brush and lodgepole pine. Is it going to be yet another case of forcing the land what it was never intended to do?

Once again, just because we can do it...should we be?