Yes, everyone has a modern smartphone now. Cool, thanks. But last time I checked, can't pay my rent with a smartphone when I'm out of a job.
> Nobody will suggest we ban cars and go back to horse and buggies so cowboys can have jobs.
Maybe not that, but have you looked at sustainable farming movements? In farming, there is a growing movement believing that the way we do farming - basically, ever larger and larger central operations running farms with tens if not hundreds of thousands of animals or acres upon acres of monoculture crops - is no longer sustainable, as the externalities get too serious to be able to ignore:
Biodiversity loss, land erosion (when everything is just the same crop from horizon to horizon and no bushes, wind and rain has an easy time carrying away soil after harvest), an increasing vulnerability to all kinds of pests...
But in order to get smaller, you need people again, because a tractor costing half a million dollars won't ever make the money back on a small farm.
Are you willing to part with your smartphone and computer? I would bet not.
That said, sustainable farming doesn't require very small farms, and it doesn't require more than 1% of the population to work on farms.
Yes, no-till farming has demonstrated excellent results
Also, a reference to population trends might be interesting. Nobody is wrong (I've spent my spring preparing fields) but could be close but actual data would be good. Meanwhile farms have been failing at increased rates.
Highly disagree. If anything we'll see more variety because mass produced food has settled on a very limited set of breeds (both for plants and animals) to keep timing and yield consistent.
I know most people don’t agree with that but it seems nice to me
