Agriculture as a Multi-variable Optimization Problem

[flwyd]

I love the debate that I get into occasionally… They say, "You know the way you farm won't feed the world versus the way we farm. We're feeding the world," and I love it when they say that, because they say, "You just can't produce enough."

… I say, "Okay, let's have that debate, but before we have that debate, I want us to both stipulate that neither farming system will feed an endlessly increasing population." The Earth has got a carrying capacity, and once you get beyond that carrying capacity, neither one of them is going to feed the world.

And most of them will stipulate that… And I say, "Okay, well I'll go ahead then and capitulate right up front that if we're going to run out of acres first, you win. You can feed way more people than I can if acres are the only limiting factor. If we get unlimited water, unlimited petrol fuel, unlimited antibiotics that don't create pathogen-resistance unlimited fertilizer resources you win.

"But now if the limiting factor becomes water, I'm probably going to win, because I don't use as much water as you do. If the limiting factor becomes petrol fuel, I win, because I don't use as much of it as you do. And if the limiting factors become phosphates and potash and these other depleting resources, I win, because I don't use as much as you. And antibiotics and pesticides, and so on. I win just about any way we do it other than acreage."

— Will Harris of White Oak Pastures on industrial versus sustainable agriculture, quoted in Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating food systems for a changing climate by Laura Lengnick

Well put. It's something of an engineering approach to food.