To put it another way, today people farm (i.e., plough, crop or graze) just 38 per cent of the land area of the earth, whereas with 1961 yields they would have to farm 82 per cent to feed today’s population. Intensification has saved 44 per cent of this planet for wilderness. Intensification is the best thing that ever happened – from the environmental perspective. There are now over two billion acres of ‘secondary’ tropical rainforest, regrowing after farmers left for the cities, and it is already almost as rich in biodiversity as primary forest. That is because of intensive farming and
...more
