[paganel]

> runoff is over-fertilization of industrialized farmland.

And I'd say that the leading cause of that is the increase of world population which necessitates the "industrialized farmland". In other words there's always a balance between more people on this planet vs more wild-life.

[jvanderbot]

partially. Over fertilization, which causes nutrient runoff (by definition wasteful and not cost effective) is not required to grow the amount of food that we grow.

Targeted fertilization or erosion control can both mitigate it by reducing waste, saving money and reducing occurance of side effects at the expense of a reduction fertilizer sales worldwide.

Tech can help here. See precision agriculture and other related topics

[paganel]

Don't think precision agriculture would scale. And even if it would scale, meaning we would theoretically be able to grow a lot more food on a lot less land, it would only mean that we'd grow more food and especially that we'd have even cheaper food. The Jevons paradox is real.

[jvanderbot]

Sure, maybe PA will not scale. But re: over-production and runoff of nutrients, tech can help, as evidenced by small-scale experiments in PA.

There's nothing about PA that guarantees more food from less land. It may. The goal I've seen is same food with less waste.

Like insulating your coffee machine. it doesn't produce more coffee, but it uses less electricity.