We must have this high leve of productivity before it's even a possibility, but once it's a possibility we can expand its use.
The current economic system is changeable, one ag technology allows us to.
From that standpoint, the math about "but you get less yield" is a bit of a non sequitur. I'm changing the divisor in the equation, which is usually how bad logic slips into an argument predicated on numbers.
The lower the yield per unit area, the longer it takes to harvest all, the more fuel is spent, and the higher the risk to lose a part of the crops due to harvesting them untimely. Lower-density crops are noticeably more expensive as a result.
Remember, ethanol in gasoline is predominantly about lifting demand for corn in order to court votes from the upper Midwest. We don’t actually need to use corn for fuel.
You can feed pigs on grain and nuts that fell before or after harvest. Ten pigs are pretty big harvesting machine. Birds as well.
Mark Shepard is claiming about twice the yield per acre of conventional farms. He’s doing this by getting less than half a yield of four+ crops on the same land. The trick to being Mark Shepard is putting enough time and energy into your job to understand a dozen crops instead of hyper specializing in two, as if your neighbors aren’t doing the exact some thing.
Now at the end of the day, we still need some staple crops around. That we can stockpile grain for three years and canned food for 18-36 months helps level out boom and bust cycles in agriculture. Good year? Rent warehouse space. Bad year? Let the warehouse lapse, or do invasive maintenance.
This is doubly bad if you're displacing natural grasslands and grassland grazing with this. I.e. plant corn on your previous grasslands and cram the cows into some barn.
This came through HN just recently. Another way to do the same though is to go back to what the big buffalo herds were naturally doing. I.e. let your cows actually "trample and shit on the land" and that's what actually keeps it fertile. Then you harvest the cows for meat while keeping their number stable.
Win - win
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/iceland-welcomes-tourists-t...
Same with many random islands explorers came across: they'd leave some livestock so when they came back later they'd have some dense and fresh food ready to harvest.
Didn't work so well in Australia. And probably any of the islands most likely.
Also, much of Iceland is a desert of lava, glass, and black sand; some other parts are covered with ice. Not many plants can survive in such a landscape, and those which do are usually not trees.
“Deforestation is a major issue that is highly prevalent throughout the world. The country of Iceland has been hit especially hard by this catastrophe. A nation that once had forests covering 40 percent of its countryside began to lose its tree cover, when the Vikings arrived in the 9th century. By the early 20th century, however, this tree cover was reduced to just 0.5 percent. To this day, the government of Iceland is working towards reviving the lost forests and restoring the land, in order to work towards a more sustainable future. This problem relates to the course of Sustainability for the Common Good because it covers the environmental issue of deforestation as well as the solutions that are being put into play to make the land more sustainable”
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/a4e20c53ee77427cb587cb7...
Ok, that hardly ever happens.
But instead of planting lots of corn and feeding your barn full of cattle with it you can also own that same piece of land and sustainably make grass fed beef. Said beef would keep your soil fertile by trampling and shitting on it.
In addition to this your vet and meds bills will be lower to non existent because you don't get the same disease issues you get in cramped barn quarters.
The BLM also employs snipers and gunmen to intimidate ranchers who don't pay the grazing fees. Some ranchers respond with impromptu militias.
Sometimes things escalate to the point that goverment agents kill protesters. Sometimes law enforcement officers get assassinated.
But mostly, cattle graze as you suggest and the BLM collects grazing fees.
[0] https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/rangelands-an...
We don’t really do that. If anything, the opposite now that the land yields more value.
Largely we just use the excess to feed animals (ie: 90% energy loss) or ethanol/biodiesel (ie: using land as a 2-3% efficient solar panel, along with lots of inputs).
Something like 75% of US corn goes into the above 2.