Numbers

Robert Samuelson's column today is all about historical stats. This one caught my eye:

Despite massive suburbanization since World War II, the United States remains a country of vast open spaces -- farms, forests, pastures and range. From 1945 to 1997, the amount of "urban land" (defined as places with at least 2,500 people) quadrupled to 65.5 million acres; still, that was less than 3 percent of the total of 2.26 billion acres. Cropland (455 million acres) and forests (642 million acres) had increased slightly since 1945. Reforestation has offset much woodland lost to subdivisions.

So, despite an increased population and talk of runaway sprawl, the cities haven't exactly conquered nature. More interestingly, cropland has not increased in proportion to the population. Why is this? Thank the Green Revolution, which has managed to vastly increased food production without using much more land in part through the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Strangely a movement in favor of "organic foods" -- which eschew such methods -- has sprung up. If you go to Whole Foods -- which I am a big fan of -- you see this stuff for sale everywhere. In a sign of its growing popularity even Safeway is getting in on the action. No doubt many of the people who buy such products do so because they think they are helping the environment. In fact the effects are at best ambiguous, since more intensive farming methods -- i.e. non-organic -- require less farmland, leaving more for trees and furry animals.

Whole Foods' promotion of such products is somewhat puzzling because the store prides itself on eco-friendly policies (even if some of them are perhaps a bit questionable). In the end I suppose the main consideration is perception.