There goes another possible experiment in regenerative agriculture, the only sustainable way for our great-grandchildren to avoid mass starvation. Industrial farming depends on oil as a chemical input , because the soil has been sterilized and turned into dirt in most places by ammonia based fertilizers. The process of tilling the land resulted in most of the remaining dirt being eroded over the past century. We're g…
Scientists will figure it out. Much more likely than everyone switching to artisan, labor intensive farms.
Or, like many things, the labor intensive parts will be automated by ever more autonomous farm devices allowing more biologic processes to grow food and less chemical intervention. The cost an autonomous drone that uses electricity to zap pests and weeds, charged off panels in the fields, over time will be significantly less than applying mass amounts of synthetic chemicals over a large surface area. The biological processes that yield soil are very efficient and essentially free at extreme scales, so long as the labor isn’t so expensive. And I think most people are wagering on automation taking over an awful lot of tasks. There have been plenty of HN postings of companies proving the basic techniques out, which work but are too expensive today. That will change. I think this is more likely than vertical farming or that we can continue to blast the environment with chemicals that interfere with fundamental biological processes at extreme scales.