Manufacturing and energy and finance are cool and all. They have collectively brought the entirety of humanity into the modern age. But agriculture? It is the first step along the path from the misty terrors of yesteryear to the world we know. Should contemporary agriculture unwind, it will mean a massive contraction in volumes and varieties and availabilities and reliabilities of foodstuffs. It will mean that entire countries that have used modern agricultural technologies and markets to pull themselves out of the preindustrial age will now fall backward into the preindustrial past. At
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