This is a frustrating, mystical simplification of agriculture. We can understand how these things work, and implement best practices, rather than appealing to t

This is a frustrating, mystical simplification of agriculture. We can understand how these things work, and implement best practices, rather than appealing to tradition and eschewing things like synthetic fertilizers and GMO crops purely out of how "unnatural" they are. Much of the woes in North American agriculture are down to the refusal of farmers to implement known best practices and the incredibly distortionary effect of endless layers of agricultural subsidies. Ancient practices may have interesting things to teach us, but they're not inherently good. And to actually fix things, the people who control the land need to actually care about doing the right things.