The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com, 4th October 2023 Tourism sells to you the story of what it has taken away. It markets the “traditional” and “unchanging” and, in doing so, changes it. As the old joke…
It seems like he’s saying that the only way forward for humanity is factory farming, which is a rather bleak conclusion to arrive at, considering how cruel on many levels it is.
It’s also important to talk about the many major breakthroughs which led to the massive drop in famine, the discovery of ammonium nitrate synthesis for example. Quite often I think these breakthroughs can benefit crop yield in any farming situation - not just factory farming.
Not only that, but a significant portion of the world population still live off subsistence farming. [Wikipedia states that in 2015, it was estimated that almost 25% of the world’s population (2 billion people) lived off subsistence farming. So it isn’t like subsistence farming is wholly ineffective.
I also don’t know about championing factory farming as the way forward is the right idea when factory farms regularly throw out massive portions of edible produce over giving it away. They will actively waste massive amounts of food to ensure their crop value does not drop, a massive inefficiency of our system. Its only reasonable when the alternative is to starve due to living within a capitalist society, where your whole existence is perpetuated solely by your ability to accrue currency.