[metmom]

Obviously, if low-tech farming could possibly support six billion people, the population would have grown to that size during the centuries when low-tech farming was practiced.

The vast majority of the world does low tech farming and yet the population of the planet has increased to what it is today.

All high tech farming does it free up people to live in cities instead of farming themselves. Just because high tech farming works in the US and a few other countries with the standard of living and moral fiber to be free, doesn't mean the whole rest of the world is supported by it.

Honestly, the quality of trolls just isn't what it used to be. What idiots....

[count-your-change]

No one would argue that the industrial farming of today doesn't produce volume that frees people from the farm but like all things we devise it has a serious downside.
It's fragile in its operation. an uninterrupted transport and distribution system is needed to move food from far away growers to consumers, consumers become ever more dependent on the food system and thus subject to vagaries of political monetary manipulation of money and production.

To me the greatest downside is the loss of understanding that feeding ourselves is the principal physical labor of mankind, that personal food production can teach us many virtues.