I can’t remember how I ran into it, but I found a post on Facebook about how the local food movement is actually bad for the environment and that massively industrialized agribusiness is the best model for feeding the world’s hungry.

The Inefficiency of Local Food • 2011 Nov 14 • Freakonomics

One of the major arguments for massively industrialized agribusiness is that it’s the only possible way to feed everyone on the planet, but, leaving aside the flawed binary argument (it’s either Big Ag or small local farms, and there’s no possible way that both models can co-exist much less complement each other), I’m not sure that Big Ag is the only possible salvation from a Malthusian catastrophe.

There Are 200 Million Fewer Hungry People Than 25 Years Ago • 2015 Jun 1 • Goats and Soda • NPR

“And those small family farms made a difference. When they become more productive, there’s more food on the table… and more income to buy other nutrient-rich foods.”

While many proponents of Big Ag argue that you need new technology and new business models to disrupt subsistence agriculture, “disruption” in developing countries means lots of people suffering from malnutrition and dying from starvation before things start getting better.