[onesun]

Either we feed our species, or we die. Granted, we as Americans eat too much and waste too much, but even if we all stuck to 2000 calories a day and cleaned our plates doing it, 19th century and prior farming techniques would simply not support our current population. And I disagree with your last sentence. Fertilizers and pesticides don't replace dirt, they make it more effective at growing crops.

[mapt]

Of course.

I just feel the need to push back against the people who think about agriculture as some kind of natural ecological outgrowth. Ag changes the ecology of a landscape enormously, and the accomodations to ag end up reshaping the physical character of things so much we forget what they originally looked like or how they originally functioned.