[YeGoblynQueenne]

As a separate comment, since it's a bit of a digression- the Green Revolution has not been all good. High yield agriculture has an -I believe- uncontroversial effect on the environment, including habitat loss and reduced crop biodiversity, but apparently also carbon emissions (because it relies on fossil fuels). There's a discussion of the environmental impacts on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Environmental...

This includes an ominous note about reliance on non-renewable resources:

Dependence on non-renewable resources

Most high intensity agricultural production is highly reliant on non-renewable resources. Agricultural machinery and transport, as well as the production of pesticides and nitrates all depend on fossil fuels.[73] Moreover, the essential mineral nutrient phosphorus is often a limiting factor in crop cultivation, while phosphorus mines are rapidly being depleted worldwide.[74] The failure to depart from these non-sustainable agricultural production methods could potentially lead to a large scale collapse of the current system of intensive food production within this century.

In other words, the Green Revolution may not be much more sustainable than the Industrial Revolution and may prove to be just as harmful further down the line, exactly because it allowed us to feed an additional 5 billion mouths or so. I guess the argument is that it doesn't really scale that well.

[neolefty]

including habitat loss

It's not quite that simple—in many places increasing yields means using less land. In particular, leaving marginal land fallow.

But the factors are pretty complicated, in the US especially dominated by policy: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030691921...

On the other hand, how much land was exhausted and then left fallow? How much was taken over for other uses (such as urbanization)?

And if we hadn't had yield increases, would we be using more land now? Or just eat less meat?

Edit:

While worldwide agricultural land has increased, in the US it decreased from 63% to 51% of the total 1949-2007 according to this survey, which draws from USDA data:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012/march/data-feature...

[_Codemonkeyism]

"Rural Kansas is dying. I drove 1,800 miles to find out why"

https://newfoodeconomy.org/rural-kansas-depopulation-commodi...

[jessaustin]

U.S. census data tells the story. The population in most of Kansas’s rural counties peaked 50 years ago or earlier.

In that 110 years ago was "earlier", that's true. But why not say that, unless the purpose is to mislead?