Innovation in agriculture has led to explosive increases in yields, while land use remains relatively unchanged

8 comments

1. I suspect the yield has a stronger correlation to pesticide use

2. Hey. Farmer here. This is grossly unsustainable. Sorry to pop your capitalism bubble, but each subsequent year, you blast soil with nitrogen inputs and pesticides that all have alkaline chemical bonds. As the compounds are used, they break down and the alkaline bonds end up forming new stable alkalines that stay in the soil.

   Alkaline soil eventually becomes unusable, and many plants need lower PH soil to propagate. Without the huge herds of grazing ungulates that use to drop acidic feces that became healthy humus, our growing lands will die. The earth isn’t a graph chart for econ 101 regards to optimize. It’s a system that has limits.

   Eventually, the corn will just not grow. Mind you, Corn is one of the hardier plants we grow, but I’m sure you won’t want to lose lentils, peas and various other crops that are becoming increasingly difficult to sow as climate change and human hubris continues to destroy our soil.

   This chart isn’t good. A flat line is. Constant growth year over year is impossible you finance dick heads.

3. One should also consider that water used and the source of the water.

   Possible water sources:
   – Rain
   – River
   – Irrigation project (distant river/rain)
   – Mined (from ancient aquifer)

4. None of it is sustainable, farmers are forced to overfarm their fields every year just to keep their land

5. yet, shitty food keeps on making Americans sick white the quality of the soil keeps deteriorating

   my focus is quality, not quantity

6. If Tony Seba is right about the innovation advances in lab grown meat, you’re going to see the land use needed to make a pound of meat absolutely plummet.

7. We will build a population to support the increased amount of food we produce which will be great until there is a glitch in yields

8. And all it’s costing us is rapid topsoil depletion (only 30-60 harvests left depending on locale), mass nitrification of water bodies, the resulting agal blooms and coastal “dead zones” causing regular large scale marine die-offs, decimation of insect populations with corresponding decline in bird populations, and since most of this “innovation” is going toward feed crops, an outsized percentage of human greenhouse gas emissions via the meat industry.