I'm not sure how this is true. Perhaps you can persuade me?
A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense. As well, a personal garden is unlikely to be a monoculture which is even worse ecologically in my opinion than a loss of efficiency. Plus there's all that Round-up...
This could actually apply to the hunter&gatherer because those didn't care much about sustainability. When a region was picked/hunted empty they simply moved to a new region, few enough of us around back then so this actually worked and regions had time to recover.
Now imagine nearly 7 billion humans living the same way: Gathering/hunting everything in their closest region until most of it is gone just to move on to a new region, no permaculture at all. It wouldn't take long before there wouldn't be anything left to hunt or gather.
>A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense.
Not every one-acre garden is actually cultivated, that's how some people are able to have them as a hobby ;)
Can you explain how this hobby is so violent? I don't think I am following the line of thought.
The typical one acre hobby garden is farmed with far fewer chemicals than the typical commercial farm. There is far more diversity and a better balance of minerals. Compost is often used and waste is effectively recycled.
..context dropping..compared to the lawn or parking lot that might be there?
Wouldn't the area needed for the active involvement of people require more space than commercial agriculture, where large machines can do a lot on a small footprint? A sprayer with 12 inch tires and a 120 foot boom can effectively 'weed' 118 feet of growing area with just two feet required for the tires. I'm not so sure a person with a hoe can beat that.
And s sprayer only spray, it does not harvest anything. They actually make UAV sprayer, though...
A traditional seed drill, for crops that can be suitably planted with one, plants rows 7.5 inches apart and spacing within the row is even closer. There is really no room for a human to comfortably exist within that space without tramping the crop. I'm not sure I understand how a hexagonal pattern opens up space for a person in that circumstance without reducing the growth area?
> And s sprayer only spray, it does not harvest anything.
For many crops you're not concerned about, even desire, wiping out the entire plant.
> They actually make UAV sprayer, though...
Certainly. Crop dusting has been a thing for as long as flying has been a viable human achievement. Although with larger and larger machines on the ground able to have a smaller and smaller footprint relative to the working area (and precision technology ensuring that the machine obeys an exact footprint), the practice seems to be going out of favour.
Humanity is currently migrating into solar power. There's no way you will gain any area by adding conversions on the way through the plants. You get better reliability, easier pest controls (without additives), and lots of other things, but you can never gain in area use.
Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence since industrialized agriculture requires far less than half an acre per person and the loss of habitat is the same.