With climate change fucking everything up does traditional agriculture of any kind have hope for staying around? When i get in a doomer mood i think about everything having to be grown inside greenhouses or hydroponics and it freaks me out.
People talk about permaculture sometimes, and I hear its better in a lotta ways but is it more resilient too? is it even possible to grow things in a way that can survive huge shifts in temp?
Doomer answer: increased centralization and utter destruction of topsoil as companies continue to race for the biggest savings possible through scale. Covid makes everything worse by putting massive pressure on smaller farmers, letting big megaproducers pick up more market share. Lots of producers will still massively produce dumb luxuries that are maximally profitable instead of using land for staple foods people can actually afford, driving up food prices but keeping brunch tables stocked. Pretty soon they'll have automated lots of low-pay agricultural jobs, leaving working families destitute. You'll get to see drones pick fruit though so that's pretty cool I guess.
Bloomer answer: People get increasingly fed up both with big agricultural companies and the government's nutrition programs, which absolutely do not provide enough for people to live off of. Food chain disruptions during Covid spark interest in creating local agricultural resilience. Decommodification of food increases as volunteerist efforts focus on expanding community gardens and nonprofit agricultural production. As the technology to produce food locally becomes cheaper, counties and municipalities become increasingly self-reliant and less dependent on the big producers. Permaculture, seen as appealing and cost effective because it provides consistent nutrition without much labor, increases in popularity as a local production technique.
If you're interested in a really powerful story about the strengths and dangers of localized agricultural production via a co-op vehicle, I recommend reading up on Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farm Cooperative .