Meanwhile the gene pool that created the grains and animals we have all become so well fed on gets smaller and thinner, ready to snap whenever Nature, or humanity, throws it the slightest curve. We do this, apparently, because of a human gene that must rebel at the notion that there is such a thing as too much food. We think we must bring Nature to its knees to grind out enough food to feed ourselves and the world. Yet we often seem blind to the fact that we may be burning out the very system that has sustained us this long, and that our farmers face bankruptcy by continuing to produce more than the world's economy can absorb. There is no reason to think that we cannot feed ourselves while weighing much more lightly on the land.
Farmers can grow less, diversify, seek local markets for their produce, innovate.
Most of all, farmers can be different from one another. They can allow the uniqueness of their own land, their own heritage, their own surroundings, their own idiosyncrasies and their own hare-brained ideas to take root and grow where they are, in perhaps the only place on Earth they will grow. Such individualism is risky, yes, but no more risky than continuing to churn out tons of a crop that no one can ship, no one will buy and no government in its right mind would subsidize. But it would also allow the kind of experimentation, local adaptation and downright beautiful serendipities that Nature teaches us. Certainly, we are smart enough to copy that, not kill it.