There's huge variability in what can be grown where, especially if you want to reduce the amount and number of inputs that are imported from further afield. There are places that can support all the crops and livestock that provide a healthy, balanced, and sustainable human diet, but not everywhere can. What if you want to eat flour in a place where grain crops aren't tenable, or butter where cows, sheep and goats don't do well?
Producing food this way also means that we need to build houses on fertile land that's good for growing things. That happens a _lot_ where I live, and I hate the site of previously productive soil disappearing under concrete house-slabs.
If you want to see less fertile land covered up make it easier for people to make money growing on their own land.
A lot of people have drawn inferences that it may have been the government, their leadership and application of ideology rather then the shift from agrarian economy.
similar to how in the american south in the 20th century, sharecroppers were forced to work on commodity farms and didn't grow food. instead, they imported processed corn from the midwest that gave them pellagra. thanks in part to market forces of the midwest corn trade.
Impossible. The world is too urbanized, there simply is no space to do this for more than a few % of the population.
> Way too-many of the problems plaguing society atm can be solved by reducing transport and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps [...]
Maybe some problems can be solved, many more will be unsolved. Reducing our transport capacity of food increases the vulnerability to crop failures. De-centralizing processing will make it harder (read: more expensive) to test for pathogens, nutrients and ensure hygiene.
> we'll be be contributing less to AGI/automation and creating actual valuable jobs
No, we would be shrinking the GDP by moving labour from highly productive sectors into agriculture. At the same time food will become much more expensive, even more so if those new employees are paid minimum wage.
> and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps between our food (other other food-related products) and ourselves
How? You're simply replacing one set of steps for another, more labor-intensive one. I encourage you to visit one of those museums where people demonstrate how people in the 18th century lived for some perspective.
> we'll be reducing the amount of plastic, fuel and electricity used for transport, storage, processing, packaging,
You didn't quite state the full conditions to achieve this reduction, so I'll do it for you. Basically we have to completely change our diets. Fresh food can only be eaten in season, and only what is locally available. We can only store food that does not need climate control to keep, so in winter there are only conserved vegetables and fruits. Not using any modern packaging and storage methods means that even in season things have to be eaten really quickly.
On the whole, your insinuation that our food distribution is some kind of unnecessary luxury that we can do away with just rubs me the wrong way. It is the reason the amount of people in famine has been dropping every decade despite a population explosion. It ensures that there are no mass-scale outbreaks of botulism, moulds and other pathogens that used to kill lots of people and waste huge quantities of food. Its efficiency (along with high productivity) guarantees that almost everyone can afford to eat sufficient nutrients even through winter.
Sure we could get some of those benefits in your agrarian fantasy, but the cost would be enormous.
Your first criticism as an example. "World too urbanized". Again, the solution solves a big chunk of other problems we have. One need only read HN a bit to see a bunch of them. E.g. 1. Food islands. 2. Focus on transport to get food because mom and pop stores closed and we only have Walmart. 3. Car culture.
My point is don't shoot the idea down, we have to consider how working towards this arguable ideal moves the needle in a better direction. And yes, maybe the end-goal I presented isn't 100% possible or the right direction for society. But working towards it means we solve a host of intermediate problems, with each one making things a bit better.
Sorry I'm not answering all your points, which some are 100% valid and I agree, but others are just us talking past eachother. E.g. I'm not entirely advocating for us to go to the middle-ages and churn butter for 2 hours a day. But there has to be an in-between that opens up additional options and ideas that I can't possibly envision, or articulate well-enough, or consider every angle and potential criticism.
What you described would be more costly and I don't think there is really any relationship to health. Your food would end up being more expensive as most of the things you listed cost very little in the grand scheme, labor is the most expensive part.
Since, original sources are all Russian, it's hard to fully verify via secondary sources, but there are claims that (1) as much as 77% of all vegetables and 59% of all meat [2] or (2) as much as 50% of all food [3] produced in Russia is on these farms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha
[2] https://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/in-1999-35-millio...
[3] https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/84725
[4] https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/a-dacha-for-everyone-...
Way too-many of the problems plaguing society atm can be solved by reducing transport and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps between our food (other other food-related products) and ourselves. Just think about how much effort is put into something simple like flour or butter or cheese (nevermind all the crazy processed stuff). The food will be more natural, it'll be healthier and with less additives, we'll be be contributing less to AGI/automation and creating actual valuable jobs, we'll be reducing the amount of plastic, fuel and electricity used for transport, storage, processing, packaging, labelling, accounting, lawyering. Every one of the major food production + distribution industries has huge support networks.