ezmackLand use in the US
TheAmishManWhat does idle/fallow mean for Michigan?
marsara9gardeningknowhow.com/…/what-is-fallow-ground.htm#….
i.e. appears to be unused farmland?
What Is Fallow Ground: Are There Any Benefits Of Fallowing Soil
Farmers oftentimes mention fallow ground. As gardeners, most of us have probably heard this term and wondered, “what is fallow ground” and “is fallowing good for the garden.” In this article, we will discuss how to fallow soil, as well as the benefits of fallowing.
I assume it’s stuck in a court process, or in the process of transitioning to another status, or farmland without a crop, or maybe abandoned but the city can’t pay to clear it or demo it yet, etc.
Idk didn’t bother going around the pay wall just thought it looked cool. I’d guess the area of land that is idle/fallow is the size of michigan
Its not location based. It just means the total amount of fallow lans in the contiguous US is about equal to Michigan.
100 people don’t own Florida and more.
I guess i don’t even know what fallow ians is
gonexpected more corn
Right?
That entire block that says “ethanol” is corn, plus that entire block that says corn syrup, and a good chunk of that block that says “livestock feed”. It’s a lot of corn.
It’s in there, it’s just split up between food we eat, livestock feed, feed exports, ethanol, and corn syrup.
QuarterSwedeIt’s completely missing North Dakota which, when I visited was mostly corn. This is misleading at best.
I’m curious why first nation reservations weren’t demarcated. Or maybe they were and I’m just an idiot lol.
cheerThis doesn’t show where these uses are located on a map, just the area of land relative to the total country.
dumptruckdanHeck I want to know where Alaska and Hawaii went.
This is a weird ass pie chart using the US map as a base right? If I am correct then this is a terrible way to display this data.
NeatoWhy? It gives people a relatable size and shape to compare to. Like saying the 100 richest landowners own equivalent to Florida.
I get that but it needs to be labeled some way to clarify this at least. A lot of people look at this and could easily think it is what each area has the most of and that the positions of the types of land have something to do with the states they are near.
Agreed. I definitely thought that at first, thinking some of them seemed very off. Glad I read these comments. It’s especially confusing considering where some things are in the map that it seams almost believable for example that NY/NJ are made up mostly of mostly urban and commercial areas.
But it is a good chart (not map) for what it’s intended to show with some perspective provided in proper labeling.
A lot of people sure keep saying “a lot of people” and getting mad at the graph instead of just laughing it off that they didn’t get it at first. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t immediately understand something.
It’s an infographic. It’s purpose is to be understandable at a glance. I thought it was a pie chart then second guessed myself then read the comments and saw a lot of comments that were confused about it. You think I am saying “A lot of people” when I mean “just me I didn’t get this shit at all but I am going to say a lot of people to cover that up”? Read other comments here… a lot of comments (which I assume come from different people) seem like those writing them are confused.
I don’t have any anger here. It’s a random infographic. If something like this was presented to me at a job where I needed a clear concise answer immediatley and my job depended on me using it… then I dunno maybe anger and frustration then?
I think you are reading things into my words that are not there.
Anyway TLDR: Inforgraphics are supposed to be understandable at a glance…this one is not therefore it is not a very good infographic. I dunno why I would laugh about it either…it’s an infographic.
squibletIt's very difficult to compare relative sizes at a glance compared to a pie chart, or other styles like just a bar graph. This is a graph crime.
I like seeing the area.
Has anyone started c/terriblemaps yet?
This seems like it was developed as a joke. Not what I’m looking for in a data-oriented forum.
Oooooh. I assumed it was supposed to have a geographic relation. Yes, this is extremely unclear.
I’m glad this community is following in the tradition of the reddit one, ugly graphics that communicate nothing useful yet somehow get upvoted to the top
SquirrelAh, that makes sense. I mean, it doesn’t make sense, but if makes more sense than looking at this as an actual map.
Yeah, this is a pretty appalling graphic that maybe seemed good in theory but is hostile to the reader in practice.
Swednecki really do not understand how anyone can be confused by this, obviously it’s not a geographical map because new mexico does not contain the sum total of all american railways…
It’s a fine graph that gives an intuitive sense for how much area is used for each thing.
Yeah and Michigan doesn’t contain all the idle/fallow land in the US but the problem is some people look at this and think that Michigan contains the most idle/fallow land in the US which is why it was used to represent that portion of the data.
I feel like there is a single sentence or phrase that could be written above the or near the graphic which would make it clear but I honestly don’t know what it is.
“land use amount is to scale, location is not”
Still seems kind of clunky, and given all the misunderstanding ITT it might do more harm than good.
Why is some people’s inability to use critical thinking anyone else’s problem? Like, don’t make assumptions then. Or, take a beat to understand what’s in front of you. There’s nothing wrong with this graph.
Yes my inability to use critical thinking is obvious because I think this inforgraphic isn’t clear enough to everyone. It’s not like there are a shit ton of comments where people are obviously confused by this infographic and all of them must lack the critical thinking skills you must have in spades. You seem like a real swell person. Keep being you and if everyone around thinks your insults make you come off as an asshole ignore them… they probably just lack critical thinking skills.
We’ll I’d heard some bad things about West Texas highways, but this just seems excessive.
No no, that’s the Grand Texan Runway for landing and takeoff of the death star!
I kind of like it tbh
Uh where the hell are roads on this chart?
bob_wileyRural highways are listed under cows.
Below cows. “Listed under cows” makes it sound like it’s a subcategory of cows, which it isn’t.
TigbittiesWhat's a weirghourhdmsjrhrht?
Central Texas is mostly used for defense? Since when? Everywhere I look around it’s tech.
Apparently this doesn’t show the locations of the separate industries, rather the landmass usage of said industries.
Which means it’s a bad diagram.
I agree, I was confused at first too.
I always knew Michigan was an unproductive POS /s
“Food we eat” is half the size of “livestock feed”. Plus look at how small wetlands/deserts are, wetlands especially are essential to climate resillience. What egregiously bad land use, wow. Thanks for this post, it’s great.
It’s just wrong though. Deserts are particularly huge in the West. Essentially the whole states of Arizona and New Mexico, plus parts of Utah and Nevada.
They’re probably inside the “parks” part.
PaupersSerenadeI think you might be on to something with the parks idea. I know California has a Protection Act on the books that covers ours.
It takes 76% less land for us to just eat plants, rather than to grow them to feed to animals that we then in turn eat. Really amazing how inefficient it is.
saltthe amount of land for cows is crazy. and the fact that more land goes to livestock feed than food we eat is interesting as well
MechanismaticBut I feel like land for cows is akin to food we eat because we eat a lot of those cows also.
The conversion losses to feed animals is very high. It takes 76% less land for us to subsist on plants rather than to eat meat. Well, actually, that’s the world average, it might be even higher in the US because of its higher meat consumption. I should check the study again.
I have examined this abstraction of a map thoroughly.
I do not see any garbage dumps, recycling facilities, sewage processing, cemeteries, energy production, water production…
I could carry on, but this map means almost nothing with all sorts of factors missing.
Without digging in to the numbers further than just looking at this map, could this be because the relative areas of the factors you listed didn’t pass a threshold to make it? @ezmack what data source was used for this?
Not OP, but I’d think cemeteries should outweigh golf courses in land mass.
Feel free to prove me wrong though.
I think you might underestimate golf course land use, as well as miss that a lot of that mightve just been counted with the surrounding neighborhoods, since that’s more of a community service
Bloomberg article www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/#xj4y…
Urban-commercial
Those take up less space than you’d think