Time to move away from industrial agriculture and towards organic farming methods (see: polyculture, horticulture, agroforestry, permaculture, crop rotation…)

“The efficiency and productivity of industrial agriculture hides the costs of depletion of soils, exploitation of groundwater, erosion, and extinction of biodiversity. Industrial agriculture uses 10 times more energy than it produces. It uses 10 times more water than biodiverse farming with water-prudent crops and organic practices use. In fact, when assessed from nature’s economy, biodiverse, ecological farms have much higher productivity than large-scale, industrial, monoculture farms. The illusion of efficiency is produced by externalizing the ecological costs.” / “…a polyculture system can produce 100 units of food from 5 units of inputs, whereas an industrial system requires 300 units of input to produce the same 100 units. The 295 units of wasted inputs could have provided 5,900 units of food. This is a recipe for starving people, not for feeding them. A common argument used to promote industrial agriculture is that only it and industrial breeding can maintain the increased food productivity needed for a growing population. However, since resources, not labor, are the limiting actor in food production, it is resource productivity, not labor productivity, which is the relevant measure. What is needed is more efficient resource use so that the same resources can feed more people. A 66-fold decrease of food producing capacity in the context of resources use is not an efficient strategy for using limited land, water, and biodiversity to feed the world.” (from the book “Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, And Peace” by Vandana Shiva)

“Modern industrial farms are built as vast monocultures, with a single crop stretching from horizon to horizon, doused in chemical pesticides and herbicides designed to exterminate all other forms of life. If you’ve ever seen aerial photographs of the American Midwest, you know what this looks like: under capitalist agriculture, the land is reorganised according to a totalitarian logic with a single goal in mind: to maximise short-term extraction. This approach has turned rich topsoils into dust, releasing huge plumes of CO2 from the earth in the process. It’s caused insect and bird populations to collapse, while chemical run-off has killed whole freshwater ecosystems. Fortunately, there’s another way. Intrepid farmers around the world, from Virginia to Syria, are experimenting with more holistic methods called regenerative agroecology. They’re planting multiple crop species together to build resilient ecosystems, while using compost, organic fertilisers and crop rotation to restore life and fertility to the soils. In areas where these methods have been used, crop yields have improved, earthworms have returned, insect populations have recovered and bird species have rebounded. And perhaps best of all, as dead soils recover they are sequestering enormous quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere. In fact, scientists believe that if we’re going to have any chance of averting climate breakdown, we’ll need to roll out regenerative methods across most of the world’s farmland and pasture. It’s more effective by far than any man-made carbon-capture technology. This is what reciprocity looks like in action. When you give back as much as you receive, it has a multiplier effect on ecosystem health. It revives life. And it’s not just in agriculture that this is happening. Regenerative approaches are being developed in forestry and fishing as well, and in many cases people are drawing on techniques that have long been used by Indigenous communities and small farmers in the global South. Large agribusinesses have been slow to adopt these methods, however – despite the fact that they have been shown to improve the quality of crops and the long-term fertility of the soils. Why? Because it requires time and labour. It requires an intimate knowledge of the local ecosystem. It requires understanding the traits and behaviours of dozens of species, and how they interact with each other. It requires care. When you treat a farm like an ecosystem instead of a factory, you begin a relationship with the land that is inimical to the short-term extractivist logic of agribusiness.” (from the book “Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World” by Jason Hickel )