[4h53n]

Increasing the efficiency on existing farmlands should be the goal. Best way to reduce harm to the soil, ecosystem, nature is if we didn't require that much land. Maybe we can't decrease our usage just yet, but we can increase the efficiencies and decrease the demand for more farmland. Even an organic farmland is desert compared a forest.

[neltnerb]

I don't follow, forests are great but if the farmland you are using gets ruined you need to do something... right now something is usually more petro-fertilizer and pesticides, and occasionally more traditional methods at smaller scales.

It's great if you can use less land for farming, but if concentration leads to the land being damaged beyond repair then what's the point? You'd just have to turn unused land into farmland, and if you're doing that you may as well use crop rotation intentionally.

If you need to deposit massive amounts of natural gas (used to make hydrogen used to make ammonia) on a small amount of land instead of using a larger amount of land and using slower methods to get nitrogen in the soil... there is surely a stable point where the soil is continually usable without needing a lot of fertilizer.

[_0ffh]

Yes, it seems to me increased efficiency would best be spent on fallowing the fields to allow the soil to regenerate.

[el_oni]

I understand your point, but at the same time i don't know of an industry where increasing efficiency has lead them to think "now we can use less".