[throwaway85825]

Are the people supposed to eat rocks? Agriculture takes a lot of land but people need to eat.

If anything agriculture is going to require more land in order to be sustainable.

[bojan]

People do need to eat, but over 80% of the Dutch agricultural produce is being exported.

Also, good portion of it isn't even meant for human consumption. Think flowers or cattle feed.

This is not about feeding the population or about sustainability. It's simply about profit.

[autoexec]

If they're exporting crops that's about feeding somebody. People who would have to try to get their food elsewhere and have to worry about the standards/quality of those new sources. It's even perfectly fine for people to grow and sell flowers. There may be ways to make it more efficient, and maybe the government should be encouraging that so they can buy up some of the saved land, but I'd bet there are ecological consequences to paving over flower farms too.

[wqaatwt]

Well Switzerland is effectively in the EU (economically if not politically) so same standard mostly apply anyway.

[picofarad]

Are the cows pets?

[wqaatwt]

Economically it would make more sense to import food from France, Spain etc. it would reduce the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of people with limited negative economic impact.

[account42]

And even without agriculture, a country should be considered "full" long before each acre has been turned into a concrete hellhole.

[selfmodruntime]

well duh let's just import food from elsewhere (and completely ignore that foreign politic squabbles might crash this system)

[throwaway85825]

It's not like countries that import the majority of their calories have frequent food riots or anything.

[wqaatwt]

There is hardly any need to import food from anywhere besides the EU, though. Which would be rather low risk.