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by tonyedgecombe 2523 days ago
Good points although I'm not sure we can put that genie back in the bottle, the population is too high for subsistance farming now.
1 comments

> the population is too high for subsistance farming now.

Is it, though? More than half of cultures are used for animal exploitation (which most of the world could do without). It appears we currently have around 2 football fields of cultivable land per person living on earth (though this may change soon with the climate).

We also have to take into account that industrial farming and monocultures kill the humus and dry off the land in the long run (over decades) making it more and more sterile (requiring an ever greater dose of fertilizers to grow anything and making the crops more sensitive to heatwaves).

Many serious agronomists (those not employed by the industry) insist not only that another agriculture is possible, but that it's the only way to prevent food shortages in the coming years (which will happen if we insist on chemical-powered monocultures).

Also, a one-garden-per-person model is not the only way to grow locally. We can of course share the land and the work. It just makes things a lot easier when the population isn't so dense that you can't grow your own food locally anymore (which is only the case with big cities).