Comment by faxmeyourcode
6 hours ago
I'm sure the same could be said about tractors when they were coming on the scene.
There was probably initial excitement about not having to manually break the earth, then stories spread about farmers ruining entire crops with one tractor, some farms begin touting 10x more efficiency by running multiple tractors at once, some farmers saying the maintenance burden of a tractor is not worth it compared to feeding/watering their mule, etc.
Fast forward and now gigantic remote controlled combines are dominating thousands of acres of land with the efficiency greater than 100 men with 100 early tractors.
Isn't this just a rhetorical trick where by referring to a particular technology of the past which exploded rapidly into dominance you make that path seem inevitable?
Probably some tech does achieve ubiquity and dominance and some does not and it's extremely difficult to say in advance which is which?
And, the end result being devastation of forests, ecosystems, animal life, fast track climate change etc.
Implying that efficient agriculture is destroying the planet is a wild take