> Probably like half of human population would die from starvation due to failed crops if we didn't use pesticides.
Half the food that is produced ends up wasted, and a serious amount of crops isn't even counted in that total figure because it's destined from the start for fucking biofuel.
Get rid of that waste, get rid of fossil fuels, and you can feed the world comfortably without having to turn farms into chemical weapon dispensers against all kinds of wildlife.
> where does their carbon come from? Eating plants
For Betty the cow on a small homestead sure.
Unfortunately modern agriculture is so fubar that it's hard to claim that as true. There are huge fossil fuel energy inputs from everything from chemical fertilisers, herbicides, transportation and processing. Not to mention the damage to the ecosystem that the massive mono-cultures this drives.
Yes and no.
On the one hand, we destruct rain forests to have agricultural space. Bad of course.
On the other hand, we destroy the remaining nature by using pesticides to increase short term production.
Nevertheless, this wouldn't be necessary if the world would switch to plant based diets as much as possible
> but also dramatic improvements in our ability to grow cheap food at a scale
Are those improvements sustainable? Agriculture that is generating high yields from converting very fertile natural ecosystems into deserts and then moving on is almost like eating through fossil resources, only that the timescale for replenishment is a few orders of magnitude closer to being relevant for humanity (but still far or of reach). Failure ecosystems that have been farmed out of existence in antiquity are still as barren as thousand years ago. If you ignore the yields of unsustainable farming, our ability to feed billions looks a lot less rosy.
>Mostly doing the very agricultural practices you decry, the ones that are "destroying the planet".
What are you talking about? We're doing it using the increased atmospheric CO2. Slash and burn is what is destroying the planet, and it has terrible long term productivity. That's why they have to keep slashing and burning.
>There's still a lot of wilderness left, and I think we're approaching maximum land under cultivation.
The acres currently under cultivation is entirely irrelevant. If I burn down 100 acres of rainforest every year and cultivate it, its always 100 acres of cultivated land. But I am destroying 100 acres of wilderness every year. The land that is now a barren wasteland still matters, even though I am no longer cultivating it.
>What they're breathlessly recommending is exactly what we've been doing for over half a century now (really, about two centuries) - improving yield.
Except we're not doing that, which is the point. We accidentally did that with CO2 emissions, but we're reaching the limits of what increased atmospheric CO2 can do. Once CO2 is no longer the limiting factor for growth, no amount of extra CO2 will help. Agricultural science is not interested in producing more food with less, it is interested in producing more profit.
> Without fossil fuel subsidies for agriculture mass starvation is certain.
Without fossile fuels for agriculture, starvation is certain. Without fossile fuel subsidies, we'd just pay a bit more for food and slightly less for other things.
> "Rendering our food supply more brittle, because we've created plants which need a very precise, artificial environment filled with external inputs."
Well yes, the farmer takes on some energy costs from the plant, by e.g. providing nutrients and protection from pests. In exchange to these external inputs, the plant provides us more food.
The alternative would be more diverse, less efficient crops, and 1–2 billion less people.
You may sound nice when you talk against fertilizers and pesticides, but if you rephrase and say that those 1–2 billion people should have never existed, you'll sound much darker.
> IMHO it's simple: current farming depends on oil
Valid point, though everything depends on energy, oil being one of the main sources.
Not the only matter at hand though soil degradation, pesticide resistant pests, water pollution, ...
We actually have no quantitative problems for now: we waste over 30% of the food production, part of it being expensive food (meat, bananas, etc). See http://www.fao.org/save-food/en/
So yeah, we can afford some optimizations while researching for sustainable solutions.
>Sure, there's [fossil fuels] somewhere up the supply chain but... it's not a big deal.
It is if you want sustainable food production.
An unsustainable system is by definition in the process of destroying itself. I don't know about you, but I want humanity to continue having food for generations to come.
> Only thing you need is to convince the elites to change to vegetarianism
I think that abolisment of subsidies to most destructive and polluting sectors (fossil fuels, animal agriculture, fishing, ...) would get us a long way.
> They are foundational to the whole global industry including agriculture
Agree.
So we use what we have to expedite the switch to renewables and reform agriculture for sustainable production less dependent on chemicals and poisons.
> If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (and free up an area the size of Africa).
No we wouldn't. Everybody gets cause and effect backwards on this one. They see that we're using essentially all of our arable land for food production and draw the conclusion that's how much is needed to produce the amount of food we currently produce.
But it's actually the other way around. We use all the land available because that's the cheapest way to produce the amount of food we need. If we had more land, we'd use it and food would be cheaper. If we had less land we'd produce the same amount of food, but it would be more expensive.
For an extreme example, we could probably feed 8 trillion people on the same amount of land by covering all of our arable land with greenhouses.
This could easily be solved by removing animal ag subsidies and with taxing of negative externalities.
That's one law, the market (= higher prices) will take care of the rest.
> people in the developing world are consuming more meat as their incomes rise
I'm aware :) However, that made sense when there were 1 B of humans, not when our needs overshoot the environmental capacity of our environment. If everyone ate like we westerners do (and they will want to, when we still do) then we'd need something like 4-5 earths to sustain everyone.
> mass-deployment of nuclear power plants and vertical farms requires only that
Sure, but that means a lot of resources (oil, for example) and further destruction of the environment (mining, built-up areas), and a large timescale.
Abolishment of animal ag subsidies is a piece of paper and few signatures.
> How do we feed people cheaply without fossil fuels (both as fertiliser & for crop transport)?
Agriculture (even without fossil fuels) has a far greater impact on the environment than all fossil fuel use combined. Why the focus on fossil fuels for all your points?
> There is no unused arable land on a planet that’s already struggling to support a human population that cleared 8 billion last month
The amount of this land that is dedicated to growing food for livestock and the livestock themselves is simply astounding. Reducing meat consumption is a much simpler solution and I believe the one that will win out anyway. Complicated solar systems like this will only become relevant once we’ve addressed the low hanging fruit (pun intended) of overproduction of meat.
Even precision fermentation is an easier to implement fix for land use, which looks increasingly like it can reduce our need for land to grow grains. See Solar Foods for example
> producing electricity from sunlight and then using that electricity to produce sugars could not possibly be more efficient.
Per photon, no. Per area of sunlit land, yes, orders of magnitude more.
Also, the photosynthesis efficiency generally refers to the entire chemical energy stored in things like the leaves, stem etc., often useless in the food chain. Solar to food efficiency is abysmal.
Then, there is the question of fertilizer and pesticide use, runoffs and accumulation in groundwater and soil, destruction of soils by intensive agriculture, water use, substantial energy required to transport the large masses involved, the subtraction of that land from the natural habitat etc. Modern agriculture is a necessary evil.
> If the world switches to a vegan diet, there wouldn't be any manure.
We could, and probably would still have the animals. There are vegan sanctuaries even in this day and age. But even without manure we'd still be ok.
> So overall yields would be around one tenth of the current ones for many important crops.
Yields were 2-3 times smaller before the "green revolution," not 10 times less.
With better methods, processes, and with automation we could further improve yields. This would undoubtedly require more knowledge than the uniform methods we're currently using.
Animal agriculture is so wasteful and inefficient that we could absolutely free 75% of the lands we're currently using for reforesting and rewilding and still have 2x more space than we have now for veggies, fruits, and nuts, while feeding everyone sustainably.
We should even accept those lower yields than we currently have; the priority should be the restoration of soils and biodiversity rather than the maximal exploitation of natural resources. Soil depletion/erosion is a serious problem, and both industrial and animal agriculture are the culprits.
Those yields are fully dependent on fossil fuels, agree. But the methods used are extremely destructive (soils, biodiversity, pollution, energy ...).
That's too why the reform of agriculture (and switch to plant-based diets) is so desperately needed, and pronto.
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