The Oil Drum

This is great if like me you are building a home out in the country on 20 acres surrounded by 100-300 acre farms. I can grow most of the food I need, without almost any added fertilizer and the ground water table is still in pretty good shape for small amounts of irrigation, what fertilizer I do need the neighbors cows can provided if I let him harvest 5-10 acres of grass to fed them in the winter. I prefer to use the tractor but could get by without it. I can also trade some of what I grow with my neighbors for things they can more easily grow and I want.

Problem is with the exception of building the house in the country, I don't do any of those other things food is still far too cheap to bother at this point. Modern agricultural techniques fertilizers, pest control, large tractors allow us to pull huge yields per acre 5 and in some cases 10 times as high as natural methods. While you and I may have enough land to sustain ourselves via natural means unless you have a way to give everyone enough land to do this, or are able to get farmers to increase land in production about 5 times, we still need the chemicals and fuel to be able to feed the cities.

This all goes back to Carrying Capacity we as the world are long past the point in population to be able to just live off the land with out massive outside inputs. Sure I can and you can but there are 6+ billion of us on this rock and not everyone can.