Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

>Many environmentalists say that even the current world population can't afford Western middle-class quality of life.

What makes you think we (we as in those of us who see reduction as a focus on environmentalism) disagree with this? We are, indeed, already too many, meaning that we should reduce further, and further, and not just be content with our current numbers, and certainly not allow those numbers to keep growing.

The city I was born in, Montpellier, grew from 100k inhabitants in 1960 to 270k in 2018. It turned from beautiful Haussmann style architecture surrounded by crops of vines and wild countryside land to a nightmare of concrete towers, oppressive modern architecture ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Pierres_... can you look at this and not feel overly disgusted?), overgrowth of suburbs around it to the point where we need to travel much further to see any wildland and a homeless problem ala san francisco that keeps getting worse and worse as we fail to build as much as necessary to fulfill the need of our constant growth and and rents and property costs keep growing beyond more and more out of reach of the average french man living there.

It is not just about CO2 emissions like what people on the left side focus on so much. It is about quality of life itself. Or lack thereof induced by letting things go on like this.

You are right, current numbers are horrendous and more than the earth could withstand if everyone had western middle class style economy, as even western countries have too much population. It isn't solely poor countries that should reduce their numbers. Encouraging people to sterilize in France would be a great thing too.

>Really you want a variety of plants pulling up nutrients out of the ground (because different varieties have different abilities to break down and convert the nutrients in the soil)

That doesn't appear to be needed. The plants don't have the ability at all, the microorganisms they attract and feed do it. You can build fertility while growing a single crop year after year, Fukuoka did rice and wheat every year for decades on the same land just fine. As long as you keep the microorganisms fed and don't insist on a program of routinely killing them, they'll break down the minerals that the plants need and make them available.

>Finally, you often want some of that happening in an anaerobic environment, so you don't bind oxygen to it.

No you don't. When it happens in an anaerobic environment you get end products that hinder plant growth instead of helping it. This is the main reason soil compaction is a problem, you get pooled water in the ground creating anaerobic conditions which kill off all the good bacteria and fungi.

I’m sorry but this fails reason on even a basic level and reminds me of something a snopes fact check would be needed for. There is x amount of energy in sunlight and if it is going through leaves it is not available to your crop to grow. Same goes for the nutrients fueling all those trees etc. He is doing a great job at making a forest web but I’d like some verified figures for that cocoa production vs a real cocoa farm.

While your examples and reasoning seems good, I don’t think it’s enough to support the conclusion.

From what I have seen, everyone who thinks there are any significant difficulties that need to be overcome is a Remainer and everyone who is a Leaver is absolutely certain that any claim of difficulty is “just project fear” — this, combined with the inherent time lag between planting and harvesting, means that what crops are around next year is entirely down to what UK farmers already believe will happen next year.

Four outcomes, for any given farm:

1. Current crops, easy access to labour: fine

2. Efficient crops, easy access to labour: fine

3. Efficient crops, no access to labour: fine

4. Current crops, no access to labour: bankruptcy

You may consider 4. to be an obvious safe bet, but when I say I think Leavers regard any talk of difficulty as total nonsense, I mean I get the impression they place it in the same mental bucket as “Satan is real and knows your online banking password”.

In outcome 4., the farms won’t be around afterwards to try it again the right way.

Given the UK is a net food importer, this is mostly separate to any question of food security, but ironically the lack of access to labour could increase unemployment.

If enough of the global beef supply were tainted by a human-communicable disease, people might shy away from it. Could the plot of some eco-terrorist film, preferably starring Nicolas Cage. Working title: "The Meating"