yes, but at the expense of the environment and climate.
And also causing regional and national dependencies.
Do mind also that our soil is getting exhausted and our vegetable food no longer contains the same amount of minerals and micro-nutrients it had on wholesome soil.
We need to eat more to get the same amount of nutrients. Even traditional natural vegetable food is already for a part empty calories.
Here in Dutch some foods that show of some nutrients the decreased content in food between 1985 and 2002.for crops grown on the cold ground (no greenhouses) in the Netherlands.
The sting is that the general stance that eating a varied diet is good enough is getting eroded if our crops do not get varied "food".
From that list for example Broccoli only has 27% Calcium in 2002 compared to in 1985.
Traditional bulk fertilisers are not aimed at feeding the full spectrum needed for good food, but are aimed at speeding up growth for a higher weight yield of crops. The soil gets therefore depleted.
Bonen = beans
Aardappelen = potatoes
Wortelen = carrots
Spinazie = spinach
Appel = apple
Aardbeien = strawberries
Foiliumzuur = Folic acid.
And here below a map of the Netherlands showing that most agricultural area is by now depleted and re-allocating of farming necessary.
This is BTW being planned in a big style for a multi-decade plan whereby agriculture will be moved to the good soils and the rest of the agriculture will be stopped (farmers to be bought out) and the bad soils will be converted in national parks.
The re-allocations of agricultural areas also planned in a way to minimise the pesticide and also Nitrogen load to surrounding national parks. Simply by concentrating agricultural areas together with national parks not bordering to agriculture.
When meat consumption goes down from livestock we will need far less soil and concentrating is possible.
BUT that is only buying time if mass mono culture agriculture continues and soil depletion is only shifted to fresh or less depleted soil.
This is also adressed on paper by new methods of crop rotation and using crops that are better for the soil. The optimal use would be to have all kinds of crops mixed on the soil which would need robot harvesting instead of the current mechanised harvesting forcing mono-cultures. The crucial factor is managing your bacteria and organisms IN the soil.
Sounds perhaps utopian but the university of Wageningen in the Netherlands is the best university there is in the world for agriculture and food security and we are used in the Netherlands to make 50 year deep plans with dikes and polders.
For many fast growing vegetables and some herbs multi-layer greenhouses will be the best way for climate, environment and healthy nutrient composition.
The dark blue the depleted grass areas (for cows) and the light blue the yet ok grass areas.
The dark red the depleted crops areas and the light red the yet ok soil.
As you can see we are going to get lots of new national parks and forests during this century.
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