[Jedd]

I agree with much of what you're saying.

It feels like part of the problem is one of wording. 'Modern farming' sounds very positive -- who doesn't like modern things? I suggest that 'industrial farming' would be a better description, and invoke a more realistic mental image of what it involves.

Holmgren & Mollison formulated a more recent answer to the problems of sustainable food production than Haber & Bosch. So perhaps a system that doesn't rapidly render the land unproductive, and does not requiring an energy input roughly the same as the (food) energy output, could be considered more 'modern'.