Malthus didn’t put up a particular date for his prediction.

  • iocase@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    The game theory of international markets and farming means you’re at a severe disadvantage if you don’t use petroleum fertillizers and pesticides/herbicides. I guess it’s possible if there’s voter appetite to subsidize farmers to an even more extreme degree with tax revenue to keep them barely scraping by.

    The big issue with subsidization is it picks winners. Small family farms usually get less and end up shafted while big mega farms get the lion share of subsidies and outcompete Joe and Jane farmer, who end up bankrupt and the mega farm buys their land… That’s my personal gripe with the whole process…

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      Yes which is why we are on this ride of ruin. The expansion no matter what damn the long term. Thats my kids and their kids and their kids if I had any problem.

    • fake_meows@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Places like Cuba and Haiti are a natural experiment in what life would look like without industrial agriculture inputs. They are basically producing food on organic small scale agriculture by hand.

      Fun fact: Britain has around the same per capita agricultural area as Haiti does, only Britain is using fertilizer and in addition importing 50% of the food sold (almost like importing double the farm area). This amount of fertilizer costs less than 1/40,000th of Britain’s annual GDP.