[chrisco255]

So this article's clickbait headline should read instead "While crop yields are up, they could be even higher..."?

Let's set aside the dishonest scaremongering headline.

No one can disprove a study that describes a fictional alternate reality based entirely on supposition of simulated outcomes.

Productivity is higher than it has ever been in human history and the trend line is up and to the right and the Guardian wants you to be terrified.

[cochne]

I think the headline is fair. Would you have the same reaction to an article claiming smoking cigarettes hurts life expectancy? I don't think the argument that "life expectancy is up 30% since cigarettes were invented!" would be a good rebuttal against the headline.

[deathgripsfan]

This is a false comparison because you can run longitudinal studies with smoking populations and compare them to control populations. Let me know when we can run experiments on climate change with multiple Earths and compare them to control Earths.

[jellicle]

Of course we can? And do? It's trivial to run a greenhouse at different temperatures and see how the plants grow. Trivial to adjust light, rainfall, mineral balance, pH, etc. Kids do this in 8th grade science fairs.

Honestly HN. Here's an idea: when you encounter some topic area you don't know anything about, just consider for at least two seconds the possibility that there may be smart people working in that field, since before you were born. THEN start talking about it. Or don't. Maybe you don't have anything useful to add.

[lanstin]

Isn’t biology as simple as Unix? Just read the man pages and the source for the binaries for a a few weeks and I can grok it. How could plants be more complicated than software? I can make stuff happen in software. Plants just sit there.

[frenchy]

That's true, but we do have populations that are closer to control. There's still quite a few people who engage in subsistence farming in less industrialized nations.

For example, the rice farmers in the northern Philippines (excluding Banaue which is heavily touristed). They've certainly benefited in the last century from medicine, a stable government that prevents their historical tribal warfare, and cheaper manufactured goods, but their actual farming hasn't changed a whole lot.

[rufus_foreman]

When I read the headline I thought it was claiming that farm productivity was falling. It's a misleading headline: I was misled by it.

But people don't click on headlines telling you that things are the best they have ever been and getting even better, but are not quite as good as they could be. You've got to feed the doomscrollers.