I can't find where he says that the US has "1.5
billion acres" of cropland, let alone "prime cropland". . . Maybe some of you
should try reading the book before posting about it, eh?
corn . . . is only 72.1If an intelligent person is unable to see how specious this argument is, there's some prejudice deeper than logic going on. The 16% and 7% numbers are irrelevant and misleading, since we're not going to plant corn in arid rangeland (to arrive at 16%) or National Forest ( 7%). The only honest comparison is the percentage of corn out of all land currently planted to crops, which is roughly 30% (this year it's 91 million acres out of 315 million). Using 434 million as the basis is also a stretch since it includes fallow land (a rough constant), exhausted marginal lands, and conservation land. Planting any of that will have dire consequences, which is why we don't.
million acres. , or about 16.6% of the "cropland", or about 7.45% of
the total "agricultural" acreage -- and last I know of, the USDA
considers forests and rangelands "agricultural"
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