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<@pseudo0> It's terrifying that 96% of all mammalian life on Earth is now human beings and our livestock. We might be able to feed more people, but habitat destruction is already the greatest threat to most wild species. Humans are doing fine, but the toll on everything non-human has been enormous. We are living through one of the greatest mass-extinction events in Earth's history.

I don't fear famine, but I worry about what we're doing to our planet.

<@XorNot> Overpopulation is a thing in parts of South Asia and Africa. Climate change can affect the agricultural output in many countries and thus the land will support less people. The population growth is still very relevant in most of the affected countries. So overpopulation will definitely be a thing, unless there are real technological breakthroughs.

<@mike-the-mikado> In the US and much of Europe, the subsidies are to NOT produce, not to produce more

<@quitit> My university has a good anecdote here

Not sure about this year but either two or three years ago over 90% of the University of New England’s grant money (over $20MM) was from the School of Agriculture

I hate many aspects of the Australian economy (especially our lack of economic diversity) but having world-best tech for farming isn’t one of them. America is still leaps and bounds behind us in many different subdomains of Agriculture and Mining

Australia is weak for only really having primary industries, but we sure are very optimised for it

<@profsummergig> You're not familiar with the geography of Australia, huh.

A) They're not growing mangoes in the desert. B) They're pretty fucking terrible at water management, google the Murray - Darling and learn you some Australian water management.

<@profsummergig> > They kind of have free land available to anyone who wants to farm.

Australia is vast and empty. In the interior, rivers are few and far between and the landscape is flat and featureless. Any 'free' land is going to be essentially desert. Even if you could grow something on it, you wouldn't want to live there.

<@profsummergig> This couldn't be further from the truth. Arable farm land is very expensive here.

<@profsummergig> The land isn't free and arable land with good water is hard to come by.

Mangoes are not grown in the Tanami or Great Sandy Desert. They're not grown around Kalgoorlie (that relies on piped in water from far, far away), etc.

   Mangoes (Mangifera indica) are predominantly grown in the Northern Territory and Queensland, and when combined, produce approximately 95% of the total national crop. Mangoes are also grown in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

crop map: https://www.industry.mangoes.net.au/resources/resources-libr...

The areas they are grown have tropical rainforest (Qld), vast Wetlands (those parts of the Northern Territory with fresh water crocodiles, swamps, etc), annual monsoons (Kimberley), etc.

But yes, we do have on point water management.

<@profsummergig> I mean it’s very very much not free

You can buy and sell x-year leases from the crown. Any with a commercially viable site sell for just below or even more than freehold land (depending on supply)

Farming logistics also works radically differently than in America: the reason our farms are orders of magnitude higher larger than American ranches spatially is because it’s only somewhat profitable at the largest possible scales

The valley I’m from originally (The Tweed) is cane country, and not a single company is viable independently. Hell we only have one mill left nationally that’s not-megacorp owned (note we have no land leases though, it’s all freehold where I’m from)