When in reality, modern industrial agriculture is one of the most ham fisted and naive approached to the problem: just bulldoze, fertilize, irrigate, and spray everything into submission. With many negative consequences of course, which we generally refer to as "unsustainable".
Because understanding all the complex relationships within an ecosystem, and then how to engineer it to yield surplus material for human use without intolerable negative consequences, is in fact a cutting edge and poorly grasped science.
The "biocultural legacy" is an empirical approach to this problem refined over milenia, which we would do well to understand and appreciate.
The "green revolution" (a misnomer with our current use of the word) sure was effective; the point is that it was also unsustainable.
Of course the land has a finite carrying capacity. And I'm not anti-ag-tech either. In fact I believe higher precision and intelligence is the answer. We need to create highly diverse and cohesive ecosystems tailored to the local environment, which requires lots of observation and iteration.
The exit for Malthusian traps is to temporarily have enough abundance to reduce the birth rate dramatically not simply to steadily increase food production. Being unsustainable isn’t actually a problem if the total population starts dropping.
"Unsustainable" isn't about matching rates; I mean we are washing away the topsoil, polluting the ocean, and releasing greenhouse gases (via fertilizer production from fossil fuels) that cause widespread climate change -- things that will make industrial agriculture itself impossible.
Yes you can imagine an amount of degrowth that allows us to keep using these technologies without as much broad negative impact, but that doesn't seem as likely. Or even necessary, if we get our act together on clean energy and "regenerative" agriculture.
Regenerative agriculture doesn’t produces nearly as much food from the same resources so that’s only an option if you’ve escaped the trap.
Similarly there’s plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere genetic engineering is a viable solution as long as you’re willing to take a slight hit to productivity as plants need energy to use atmospheric nitrogen.
Alternatively we can spend more energy to capture atmospheric nitrogen, but again only if we can avoid maximize output while minimizing inputs. And so fort across every issue you’re talking about.
> things that will make industrial agriculture itself impossible
You can continue to do all of those things across geological timeframes. Industrial agriculture doesn’t need healthy oceans, natural topsoil, or current levels of CO2. Carbon capture to produce chemical feedstocks or even fuels isn’t an efficient process, but it’s a proven technology. If batteries weren’t an option for example, we wouldn’t just give up.
ChrisArchitect•2mo ago