But that's what we have to do to feed ourselves, say many experts. The world, to them, is not too high a price to pay for human survival.
An agricultural monocultural system that can't make money without subsidies, washes away the land, undermines biodiversity and is dependent on fossil fuels for its machinery and chemicals is unsustainable... and inefficient. The sole justification of agricultural intensification has been based on falsified costings.
Small farms produce more food per hectare or acre than large farms; they just do it with more people and lower chemical inputs. A large monoculture farm may produce more corn per acre, but this crude measure doesn't take into account the livestock on a small farm that provide food and manure, bees that pollinate and provide honey, and the fewer chemicals used. Many small farms 'intercrop', planting a secondary crop between the rows of a main crop, operating with a flexibility not available to monoculture. The 1992 US Agricultural census described the 'Inverse Farm Size-Productivity Relationship' and showed that farms under 27 acres were ten times more productive in cash output per acre than farms larger than 6,000 acres. Even the World Bank now supports smaller-scale farming and encourages land reform to place small farmers on inefficient large landholdings. True 'intensification' of agriculture is when a farmer is in intimate contact with the land, the wildlife and the environment and maximises output sustainably.
