Insisting on less efficient production methods at a time of shortage is perverse
In the midst of the current global energy crisis, it can be helpful to look at how past societies dealt with similar problems. It is almost forgotten today but, as the author Vaclav Smil has pointed out in his most recent book, the industrialised world at the end of the 19th century was on the brink of serious food shortages, as the combined populations of Europe and North America grew from 300 million to 500 million between 1850 and 1900. Farmland became short in supply, so the only way to avoid a Malthusian nightmare of mass starvation was to find ways to increase agricultural output per acre.
