No-one mentions this when food security is discussed. The farmers here in NL use the security excuse too but absolutely no-one mentions that their food production is directly dependant upon the import of magnitudes higher tonnage of feedstock - soya from Brazil - than the meat / dairy it produces. Then I'm not even looking at the fertilizers / chemicals which are also imported.

Low carbon farms balance would be: "low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax

High carbon farms balance would be: "high carbon" profit + subsidy - high carbon tax

If ["low carbon" profit - small carbon tax] > ["high carbon" profit - high carbon tax] (e.g. if the carbon tax is high enough), farms have an incentive to lower their carbon emissions.

The subsidy is here to make sure ["low carbon" profit + subsidy - small carbon tax] > 0

The subsidy could be independent from the carbon emissions (e.g. by subsidies on the produced goods) while the carbon tax isn't, effectively creating an incentive to produce in a less carbon intensive manner.

If I can make 1 unit of food for €50 and use 50 tons of carbon, or make it for €60 and use 10 tons of carbon, a carbon tax and food subsidy would allow me to sell that €60 low carbon food for €50 and force me to sell the high carbon food for €60

This gives an economic incentive to use the lower carbon method, funded by those who use more carbon, while not changing the end price or output.

You tax the carbon (something you want less of) and you subsidise something else you want more of. So you might end up with the average farmer not having a change of costs, but still disincentivising stuff we don't want e.g. carbon emissions.

> how about some technology innovation instead of governance and taxation

The history of solar, EVs, batteries etc. show these work hand in hand.

Why invent a way to capture methane from slurry, or form a business to sell that idea to farmers if they're allowed to pollute for free?

What technological innovation do you think farming could adopt, that it hasn't already...? They don't operate with simple machinery. They regularly use some of the most complicated systems that mankind can build, such as satellite systems, chemical analyses, etc.

Governance is needed, where progress does not occur naturally.

Land use is one of the big topics covered by the IPCC:

https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/

> how will converting farmland to forest

Farming is very carbon emission intensive if the farmland is reclaimed wetland. Converting the farmland to forest and stopping draining (making it more wet again) can definitely reduce carbon emissions significantly.

> Denmark has no ability to impact global CO2 emissions

This is such a tiresome and logically hollow argument. Denmark has the ability to reduce a fraction of the worlds emissions. The size of the fraction is proportional to the size of their emissions. Every country has a responsibility to reduce it's per capita emissions to sustainable levels. China has lower per capita emissions than most richer countries.

Economists look at inflation on a month/month or year/year basis. This is not an accident as it purposely ignores the destructive cumulative effect of inflation.

Individuals, by contrast look at the cumulative effect of inflation. If inflation runs hot for several years and then comes back to a moderate level, prices don’t go down regardless of what economists would have you believe. The effect of inflation has memory.