It's no accident that you've linked ag with energy.

And ID'd that ag "defies" TEC.

Ag HAS to defy TEC because it is the transfer mechanism
of the eco to the economy. All wealth is automatically leveraged
away from agriculture. EX- Why have the term "Nonfarm payroll employment".

Note that Zero economists talk about ever "paying back" the "equity"
taken(borrowed) from Mother Earth.

Just as talk of "subsidizing" energy production to create more energy
defies the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Absolutely.
In extremis, WWII, food import blockade etc., following dismal depression in 1930s and low Ag production providing less than 30% of UK food as calories, UK had to invent all sorts of regulatory mechanisms to increase and smooth farm production. Marketing Boards for example for produce (e.g. eggs, milk, potatoes). These survived until need to join EU followed by Thatcher / Reagan globalization when agricultural production problems were deemed to have been solved.

And how society had come over the years to realize that you simply had to dampen the cycle in agriculture, to make sure both the farmer and the society survived.