That's a complete mischaracterization. Intensive mono cropping is time and labor intensive because you have to factor in inevitable losses in crop yield (due to blight, pests, etc.) plus the labor costs of harvesting a single crop that all matures at once. The costs of soil nutrition are also exacerbated because monocropping extracts nutrients from the soil with very little return (there's a lot of hubbub about rotational cropping with clover and things like that, but it's not a long-term solution, especially when you're bleeding money for having a field go fallow)

Building up soil diversity is 100% about working with nature to build crop and soil diversity, and letting natural processes accumulate to produce optimal growing conditions. The issue is it's not very scaleable, and so grumpy Westerners and urbanites toss it aside because they don't want to actually grow the food, they just want to feel good about buying it

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago

Yeah. The problem with capitalism is that if you're not willing to fuck things up for short-to-medium term benefit before moving onto the next thing, you'll go out of business to someone who is.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Yes, but without fossil fuel inputs humanity couldn't sustain 8 billion people, renewable energy or not.

My point is that humanity is heading into a foundational tree chipper. Don't you think we're already seeing signs of unraveling?

Of course humanity can survive on renewable energy, that's how we built the Pyramids, but those civilizations didn't have 8 billion people shopping on Aliexpress or spray cheese on nachos to watch the football game.

[–] head_socj@midwest.social 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I also agree with you that it's unraveling. But that's why'd I'd rather try to adapt now and face the reality than pretend I can have Amazon Prime and not participate in killing life on Earth.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, agree. But how many people do you think we can sustain your way globally in the coming decades? We are projected to reach 10 billion by 2050 by some estimates.

[–] head_socj@midwest.social 1 points 1 hour ago

I'd argue we're already in overshoot as far as carrying capacity, if we're using current standards of living in the West as the baseline. In that sense, population decline is inevitable.

Its impossible for me to answer the question you're asking, but I posit this: at this point, what is the alternative? Can we keep affording to slow-walk actionable solutions to climate change? What are the wealthy nations of the world willing to sacrifice to sustain Earth's future as our home? How will we decide who and what to preserve, and who and what is worth losing?

[–] head_socj@midwest.social 1 points 5 hours ago

I think your argument is sound if the goal is to sustain current living standards in developed nations

But perhaps we should be evaluating whether, if those living standards require such an oppressive system, it may be better for us in these wealthy nations to learn how to do without

Not easy, not even likely, but necessary if we want to have a planet for future generations