"In 2014, 'Scientific American' published a short but ominous article titled 'Only 60 Years Left of Farming if Soil Degradation Continues.' Similar claims popped up in the 'Guardian' in 2019 and in the BBC in 2024.
"The BBC article ... proclaims that the world’s poorest areas already 'have zero harvests left. ... But the claim that earth has a small number of agricultural harvests remaining is unfounded. In 2021, the data scientist Hannah Ritchie busted the myth for 'Our World in Data.' Not only could Ritchie find no existing scientific citation for the claim, she found that such a claim could not possibly be defended. ...
"The claims about soil degradation would not be the first time the media has bombarded the general public with excessively bleak depictions of our agricultural future with little evidence. ... The problem is that this narrative isn’t just wrong; it is dangerous. The practices these food systems critique elevate will have worse impacts on climate, global food security, and the environment writ large.
"Although climate change may reduce agricultural productivity compared to a world without climate change, there is no reason to believe that its impact can’t be completely negated through technological progress. ...
"Most studies ... tend to find that, on a global level, climate and CO2 changes are detrimental to yields. Even so, climate change’s detrimental effects pale in comparison to the overall productivity growth caused by technological and practical advances in agricultural production. ...
"[T]he past half-century has seen about 1 degree Celsius in global warming. And yet, global agricultural output has increased almost four-fold over the same period. This increase in agricultural output is responsible for the prevention of g more than 3 billion hectares of land being converted to agricultural land—about a quarter of the world’s total arable land.
"These yield gains saved lives. We’ve seen a steady decline in hunger over the past five decades, despite an uptick in the past few years due to conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, to be sure, extreme weather impacts. For example, the amount of calories produced per person globally has increased by a quarter since 1970, despite the world population more than doubling.
"Increased agricultural yields, which came despite a changing climate, were due to technological advances. These include synthetic fertilizers, modern pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides; fossil-powered mechanical equipment; expansive irrigation systems; advanced breeding, including genetic modification; confined animal feeding; and many other technologies, drove the incredible yield growth in both staple and specialty crops, and the massive leaps forward in livestock production. And there is no reason to believe, as BTI’s Patrick Brown, Emma Kovak, and I argued in 2023, that technological and socioeconomic factors will suddenly stop impacting agricultural yields. ....
"There is a deep irony [then] to how critics of the world’s food systems use the supposed impacts of climate change on agricultural yields to advocate for their preferred alternatives—alternatives that are proven to have negative impacts on crop and livestock yields ... [A] global switch to organic or regenerative agriculture by 2050 would have a worse impact on food security, the farm economy, and political stability than climate change, especially when modellers account for technological change. ...
"In practice, we already have examples of what might happen if the organic advocates won the agricultural transformation they dream of. In 2022, Sri Lanka decided to ban the sale and use of synthetic fertilisers at the behest of advocates such as Vandana Shiva. The ensuing months saw failing crop yields, skyrocketing food prices, and ultimately, a public coup that forced out President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
"To be sure, climate change will likely impact our food systems. Some prices will go up, some will go down. But, technological breakthroughs and the adoption of existing technologies will also impact our food systems for the better. Rejecting industrial agriculture would be a grave mistake."
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