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by codefreeordie 1495 days ago
That would be a problem if the population doubled tomorrow magically, but not if it happened through ordinary growth. We are presently using both the smallest number of people and the smallest share of land for food production at any time in history.

The reason we're struggling right now has nothing to do with the food-production capacity of the planet. It's all a combination of sudden supply shocks and governments being stupid and destructive.

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> We are presently using [..] the smallest share of land for food production [than] at any time in history.

per person. In absolute terms (the only terms that matter to the environment), it is by far the largest. Every time the population has grown so far, our impact on the environment has increased. But for some reason, you think this time will be different?

No, we are actually using fewer people and less land in total for farming than at any time in history.

Well, not "in history", but certainly in the last 2000 years.

This is fantastically incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land#Area shows the history of agricultural land growth.