If you haven't read about the Green Revolution [1], you probably should. Basically, this is was a series of technological developments in the early 50s and 60s

If you haven't read about the Green Revolution [1], you probably should. Basically, this is was a series of technological developments in the early 50s and 60s that completely revolutionized agriculture. High-yielding seed varieties, fossil-fuel fertilizers, chemical pesticides, etc. During the Green Revolution, the proportion of common feedstocks that are edible grew from 4-5% to 40-50%, and the number of humans that can be supported on earth by a typical 2000-2500 calorie diet grew from ~1-2B to 10+B. Most of the things we hate about modern agriculture - pesticides, GMOs, monocultures, Monsanto's dominance, the loss of small family farms, coupling between agriculture and fossil fuel extraction - came about because of the Green Revolution. But without it, 80% of the world population would be dead or never born. Agriculture isn't really in need of Silicon Valley style disruption, because it happened in the 50s. We currently produce enough food on earth for everyone to have a 3000+ calorie daily diet, and we could increase the world population by 50% with current food output and still have enough to eat. The problems with agriculture today mostly concern distribution and tail risks - we produce plenty, but it's allocated inefficiently (wealthy people eat veal and foie gras, poor people struggle to get enough basic grains) and it could be wiped out by a blight or supply chain disruption. Silicon Valley doesn't really help with these problems, and if anything exacerbates them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution