throwaway48303

> The % of population engaged in agriculture as compared to pure consumers of agricultural produce. This is perhaps what msandford meant. The net number of agricultural workers 'producers' is rapidly declining due to higher yield 'jobs' off farm. This impacts output/acre significantly.

That has not been the case. Yields have improved in lock-step with the decrease of farmers. This is largely due to improvements in farming equipment, better hybrids, transgenic traits and other technological improvements.

"orgy of soil destruction" "allow contractors to rip their fields to shreds for the sake of a quick profit" "This is what topples civilisations" "macho commitment to destructive short-termism"

Sensationalist garbage. No farmer willingly treats their land like that, and I'd wager that even the average farmer knows more about soil science and biogeochemistry than Monbiot does. But they don't get sinecures to write clickbait garbage for biased rags.

You lasted longer than I did. It only took me a few paragraphs to realize Monbiot has never actually talked to a farmer.

International news sources, especially state-funded ones like Al Jazeera and RT, are just as biased, just in the other direction (US and Europe are teh suxx, Russia and OPEC are your friends!). If you can handle the cognitive load of filtering out the biases from all sources and have the perspective and knowledge to synthesize them into some objective truth, then my hat is off to you because I can't do that.