re: #327 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

100 years ago we didn’t have so many people to feed either. The land needed to grow food, arable farmland hasn’t expanded either, at least not without destroying forests (like what is happening in Brazil right now)

My great grandparents were farmers in Ohio. They grew pretty much everything they needed to feed their family on that farm. The surplus was sold at market. They grew all kinds of vegetables, had chickens, cows and an orchard that grew apples and nuts. That model is pretty much dead now, though there are some efforts to bring that stuff back. We have more people now than ever who are not at all interested in how their food gets to market, much of which is not at all sustainable. California is having issues with water now, but in addition to that, the same land has been used to grow the same crops for decades and in order to do that, massive amounts of fertilizers are required.

My point is that we didn’t need to alter and hybridize crops 100 years ago because the population being fed didn’t need as big of an output coming from those farms. I hope I’m making sense.