Do we need robots with lasers to feed the world?

Last year I read George Monbiot’s ReGenesis, a book that upset a few people because it couldn’t endorse some favourite environmental farming solutions. For example, Monbiot argues that we can’t feed the world with traditionally farmed organic food. It’s too labour intensive and therefore hard to do at the scale that we need to feed a large population.

Maybe food should be more expensive, some might think. We could afford to pay a little more to avoid environmental harm, pay farmers properly, ...