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Comment by fredgrott | Hacker News Reader

former, son of family of farmers...

It is more than that

When you over produce crops you tend to plant them in narrow rows which overloads the soil hence the need to use fertilizer. Note, it's been this way since the 1940s in USA and Europe.

Or in short words we are not being effective in feeding the world and are wasting efforts on capitalistic goofs rather then using more effective solutions.

Native American Indians used a technique borrowed from South American Indians where they refused to do monoculture, instead they grew 3 to 4 crops in the same field.

If we want the future world to starve we will stay on Monoculture.

If we want to save the planet then we need to move away from Monoculture.

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> Native American Indians used a technique borrowed from South American Indians where they refused to do monoculture, instead they grew 3 to 4 crops in the same field.

Are you talking about crop rotation or growing multiple crops in the same field at the same time?

Same field, same time. This allows each crop to share different proportions of the soil nutriments, but also help each other because you reduce the pest load as pest do not target the same way the different crops.

This is the same principle we have in mixed forestry (where I have more experience).

They did that, but modern science has checked it out, and found the crops competing with each other means all crops are harmed. Crop rotation - where you grow a different crop every year is a much better answer.

I would be interested in your publications because doing a simple search[0] and reviewing a couple of papers provide me with more positives than negatives.

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=mixed%20cropping

I could have sworn wikipidea had information on that years ago. It has been removed now if so. I can no longer find my sources.

Presumably:

* https://inthesetimes.com/article/regrow-native-american-agri...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)

The latter. They're probably referring to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)

There was a reason for the green revolution though.

Nobody has ever disputed that mechanization and intensive use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers will increase yields in the short term. But what we are currently experiencing are the long-term consequences, which together with the effects of climate change and the vulnerability of global supply chains pose a real danger to food security around the world.

> vulnerability of global supply chains

We are much better off with them than without them. Someone might say, when their car breaks down, 'being dependent on this car is causing me serious problems; I'm better off with a horse'.

It’s not a “with or without” question. Is a “do we want to rely on the behavior of a country like Russia or China, or do we want to assume that these supplies are risky so let’s model and mitigate that risk” question.

It kinda was a with or without question in the parent comment, that we will starve and the planet will die if we use monocultures. Hence my comment. Of course I agree with you that agriculture can be more robust, but 'native Americans did this technique with low intensity method to feed a small population so we should' is about as facile as the 'trade cars for horses' example

This is a misconception. Sustainable practices do scale.

Is that a question? Who is not modeling risk, at least among large, sophisticated actors?

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