What evidently does NOT work is the quite new practice of industrial tilling and fertilizer, which is causing rapid breakdown of our natural environment and future potential for food production.
The industrial practices that have enable us to feed a population of 8 billion, with surplus - a lot of food is thrown out as waste because we have so much of it we really don’t have to be super strict with it.
The industrial practices that have allowed the majority of the population to do something other than be directly involved in agriculture.
What part of that isn’t working?
The sky is falling, co2 will cook the planet, industrial agriculture is poisoning the land, over fishing will collapse fish stocks.
We’ve been told these things for, what, at least sixty years now.
Now we can add A.I. will de-employment everyone.
I don’t believe any of it.
The insect population is down a ridiculous amount where I live and also in neighboring germany.
I could link the study and such but honestly it's not like these things aren't backed up by my own experiences and those of my parents and grandparents.
I do find a lot lot less insects than I did when i was young. We no longer get much (if any) snow let alone the kneedeep stuff. It's harder to catch certain kinds of fish. The fishing boats where I used to visit every year go quite a bit further nowadays because those fish stocks have collapsed.
The evidence is there. Read something. Watch a video. The resources are readily available and abundant.
Make a garden patch and experiment for yourself if you refuse to accept any outside information.
This video is 15 years old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aR5OLgcc0
It doesn't have to cook the planet to cause massive suffering. Do you think there hasn't been global warming? What amount of global warming would change your mind?
Tilling and using crazy amounts of mineral fertilizer definitely improves yields. But it will, in the long term, also kill agriculture to a large extent if we're not careful. We're not talking about highly speculative outcomes here: The data is pretty clear and everyone with even a large pot and some soil can run the same experiment at home and come to the same conclusions.
Farmers need to survive, they need to earn money, they will obviously optimize for short-term yield. We shouldn't judge them for this, but we _should_ find ways to solve the issue, ideally together with farmers.
The no-till experiments started when the destructive effects of deep deep plowing started to appear (e.g dust bowl). It's a clear sign that society realizes that the local optimum isn't sustainable.
No-till is actually quite technical if done right, often requires some level of herbicides or way to cover the soil.
The argument "why didn't we do it before" is moot, before the 19th century midwives didn't wash hands either, why are they even do it now? Right?