What they don't seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil quality high. These problems were solved decades ago, just not by the industrial farming community
It's like everyone who's ever watched a YouTube video about planting a 3 sisters garden has an opinion for the people actually staking their livelihood on this now.
It is more about that fact that people talking about sustainable food production do not share many goals with commodity farmers exchanging corn and soybeans for as much cash as possible.
At least farmers have the humility to not go on the internet and smear you based on their opinion of your use of a document database over a relational database.
"I've never farmed in my life, but I'm pretty sure I know more than the guy who has been doing it for decades and whose entire livelihood is based on it."
Pretending indigenous communities “solved” this is a farce. If we switched to their methods 90% of the population would need to die because they don’t scale.
Not a good look to strawman things like this when you have sibling comments elsewhere in this thread saying the discussion needs more nuance.
I actually did napkin math awhile back comparing a particular 16th century indigenous agricultural yields with 20th century American agriculture [0]. The indigenous system came out favorably until the second half of the 20th century despite the limitations of hand tools and natural fertilizer. There's still a gap between that and current yields, but I think it's fair to point out that most advocates of these systems are actually arguing for a synthesis with modern technologies that allow them to scale rather than a complete rejection of modernity.
It’s not a strawman and there isn’t much nuance to what you yourself said. It’s not even close to being adequate.
Claiming that people are arguing for “synthesis” is just a weasel word escape route. Indigenous farming is completely inadequate and the parts that are useful have already been incorporated into modern farming.
What is it you think is still on the table for this “synthesis”?
Are you familiar with how traditional agricultural systems tend to work? They're vastly different than modern industrial agriculture in my personal experience. You won't find average farms in Central Valley or the midwest doing intercropping (especially anything besides strip intercropping), hyperlocal heirloom varieties, terracing, and complex crop rotations.
Tractors don't like intercropping or terraces, complex rotations are logistically difficult and expensive without a meaningful market to back them. Distributors also don't want your optimized hyperlocal varietals nor do farmers want to manage seed production, so most people buy commercial varieties.
You don't need to explain why these things are true because I already get it. It's beside the point here.
> Are you familiar with how traditional agricultural systems tend to work?
Yes, they produced terrible yields that would starve the current population.
There is a reason farmers’ markets are for the upper middle class. Anything that isn’t done at scale can’t feed 8 billion people. If it can’t be done with combines/tractors/etc, it’s fucking useless.
Without experience, land, and modern industrial farming techniques? No, "everybody" would not start subsistence farming. There would be massive famines, billions would starve and die.
But if you ignore the labour demands per mouth fed, the education needed, the amount of land to feed current western population to sustainable replacement level, the requirement to maintain advanced defence systems to prevent land being taken or otherwise destroyed, the issues with the global climate affecting whatever you do in this agrarian society, could it be done?
Like the rest of industrial age development, farm automation has historically been built around treating everything uniformly (even distribution of seeds bred for easy harvest in evenly spaced rows evenly fertilizied with no rocks etc etc). Moving away from that introduces all kinds of complexity, mechanical problems, data problems, etc, which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of potentially better ways to do things. It's happening though.
What I'm getting at is things like applying fertilizer based on estimated need from imaging data, using robots with lasers to kill weeds, mechanized intercropping, etc. Not something consumers will necessarily see any direct impact from but that improve the quality and economics of production.
A historical existence proof of a system or technology working has essentially nothing to do with whether it's being practiced in industry today, and whether it's being practiced today has very little to do with the product or pricing you see when you for example stop by KFC to eat a piece of chicken that's largely created out of corn, soy, and methane. That's the beauty of capitalism and commodity markets, John Deere can roll out technology for say computer-controlled planting that improves efficiency and the dividends get spread across the value chain without everyone having to know about it or change what they're doing.
We do. Perhaps you may not recognize our lingo. For example, around here we humorously refer to wheat as 'poverty grass' because there is no money in growing it but recognize it as a necessity to keep in the rotation for the ecological health benefits it provides.
Crop rotation seems to be pretty widespread. I remember as a kid learning about it and knowing I’d see different crops each year to help the soil for future harvests.
Crop diversity is great. And you also need lots of organic matter to go on top of the soil: to build life in the soil. that's much better than trying to duct tape the matter with fertilizer.
Crop rotation has been standard practice my entire life. One of the many kickers though is soybeans are the fallback crop for really wet springs. Many crops need to be planted by a certain date or the growing season will be too short. Soybeans can "make up for lost time", so to speak. If your first planting gets flooded, or if it's too wet to get any crop in, you can wait until it's dry and toss in some soy to recoup some of the cost. Thing is soybeans use a lot of nitrogen.
Many years ago one of my neighbours tried not rotating is crops. It worked out okay the first couple of years, but it wasn't long before his yields nosedived and within the five years he was bankrupt.
My family's been farming corn on corn for 20+ years. Started strip-tilling in the 80's High residue fields help trap as much moisture as we can with limited irrigation capacity. Farmers have no choice but to take care of their soils to remain viable. And more than viable, be profitable as there are many people who depend on them both for their livelihoods as well as an ever demanding population with mouths to feed.
