[johnchristopher]

> The industry is absolutely inefficient when you consider what inputs required: pesticides, seed, machinery, fossil fuels for planting/harvesting/transport, massive government subsidies -- not to mention the depletion of the soils that come along with it. It is not even monetarily efficient: take for example the dumping of millions of gallons of milk to match quotas this past year. It's far from efficient.

> I would not consider something that requires so much input to be "more efficient at feeding a person". It is however a system that is efficient at feeding mass amounts of people -- if you ignore the inputs.

I do agree but at the end of the day all that matters to most people regarding food is the price in the supermarket aisles.

I have fun memories of my SO digging up her father's potatoes and getting back from the garden with 5 of them “damn, that took a lot of muscle to get them out of the ground”. They were really good though. Gertrude Betrand's stuff.