I’m not a farmer but I’ve been reading about the history of industrial farming lately and I’ve become convinced that we’re approaching agriculture completely wrong. We’re planting massive monocultures in soil that’s been wrecked for decades (via the things you’ve mentioned), surely that would have something to do with it?

If we completely flipped everything we’ve been doing for agriculture we’d be better off in the long run. Small farms have better yeilds, polycropping is better for the environment and modern pesticides create an evolutionary arms race that we will never win. We’ve got it all wrong and we’ve known it since (at least) the 70s. These outdated, expensive, impractical agricultural practices are only making things worse

As you say, you’re not a farmer.

Monocropping is vastly more efficient on a number of counts, especially labour input. I can’t emphasise enough what a big deal that is, it’s really the only reason anyone is getting fed.

Yes, there’s a lot of problems with agriculture - predominantly its scale and extent, but eight billion mouths take a lot of feeding. Topsoil loss should be our major concern, together with biogeochemical losses. Every other issue is fairly minor in comparison to those, really.

Again, that’s not really how food production works - although it is a problem. Production surpluses are an essential buffer to deal with both supply and demand shocks, the elasticity this provides is (and I’m repeating myself) the only reason anyone is getting fed.

Capturing that food waste so it can at least end up back in the soil, yes, that’s something that needs improving.