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Much better than it did back then. Modern farming is much more resilient than farming back then as is proven by how rare famnes are today when they used to be c
by jeltz 4y ago
Much better than it did back then. Modern farming is much more resilient than farming back then as is proven by how rare famnes are today when they used to be common in the past.
- Retric 4y agoThat’s more a function of over production due to subsidies than inherent resilience. Annual crop production still varies wildly, we just have much larger buffers and better distribution than our ancestors before starvation kicks in so a 12% drop isn’t noticeable for the average consumer. https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity=corn&graph=production https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=us&commodity...
- askvictor 4y agoI think that it's more of a supply-chain thing than modern farming being inherently more resilient. We can irrigate when it's dry (as long as there's a pipe from water _somewhere_, which isn't always a given). But can't do much about floods. Certain pests can be controlled, but monocultures make for very brittle systems when a pest evolves past the known defenses (see: bananas). Ultimately, we have transport and distribution across the entire globe, so a crop failure in one place doesn't mean a famine there as we can ship food there (unless you're a poor country, in which case the rest of the world doesn't care much).