Every common farmer could have told you that you will run into huge problems if you don't use fertilizer on a soil that has been fertilized for years. The soil

Every common farmer could have told you that you will run into huge problems if you don't use fertilizer on a soil that has been fertilized for years. The soil probably has zero nutritional value for plants and any water will quickly evaporate. It is basically just sand that may or may not be too acidic or too alkaline because of chemical residues. It would take years to prepare the soil. You will also need more land to plant different crops and let it regenerate. Chemical NPK fertilizer is something terribly effective for that matter. It would be a huge improvement to regulate how much is allowed and farmers need to be compensated for the additional land usage to be able to do sensible crop rotations and allow the soil to actually build up nutrition. Overall this could easily take a decade or two. Of course the motivation wasn't ecological, fertilizer got more expensive and there was no money to buy it with. Industrial fertilizer is made from natural gas after all... You could probably also use oil...