Inefficient from an economic perspective may not be what we need as a society.
Perhaps we need more farmers living the the county, spending money in small county towns, with more work for people with those special labor skills. Get people out of the city and more people into primary industries.
No straight up inefficient. They produce less. More land is occupied for non productive buildings. Heavy equipment cannot be used at scale. Farms which go bankrupt and fall into disrepair don't produce, and the fields degrade.
The only way what you wrote could make sense would be if it's referring to crops grown for animal feed, and comparing that to if the crops were directly consumed by people.
So, the claim is thinly veiled propaganda for vegetarianism.
