Even though the Green Revolution and modern agricultural production has created larger yields and alleviated poverty, the essential weakness has been the reliance of petroleum based fertilizers, as summarized here:

Some kinds of fertilizer have nearly tripled in price in the last year, keeping farmers from buying all they need. That is one of many factors contributing to a rise in food prices that, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program, threatens to push tens of millions of poor people into malnutrition.

I have begun to consider if it is in fact high time for us to question some of the basic tenets of modern agriculture and work to develop more sustainable solutions, and improve on the ones that we do have.

This will require us to abandon at least a little bit of the modernist conceit of what productive agriculture looks like.