> Also (expert beginner warning) apparently soil fertility is a huge issue by itself due to heavy-duty agriculture being very depletive on soil quality.

Very.

And Food Security will be a huge issue moving forward in the 21st Century, as seen with COVID Pandemic shortages it can occur very quickly and have dire consequences due to its centralized and broken networks; also it occurred not because farmers cannot produce the product but because they cannot deliver the product to Market, which leads to Global supply chain disruptions.

The consequences of soil depletion is such that the recovery/remediation costs are so high that its far more affordable to deplete/contaminate the area and recover your costs for the inputs via subsidies and cash crops then it is to undertake sustainable Ag. This is model is soon (if it hasn't already) to run out time as unpredictable weather patterns and climate change are distorting what was the 'status quo.' I've seen it in Switzerland where arable farm land is limited and has a huge premium, one of the farmers I knew bought a 5 hecatre plot of land (I forget the crop) from a conventional farmer adjacent to his livestock grazing plot and home that due to pesticide and artificial fertilizer use had become sterile and unable to yield anything of value. The Farmer sold it to him for a pittance, and the continued to put over 15 million CHF to recover the soil over 25 years, incrementally he decided to plant an apple orchid as he went along, until eventually it was completely done via a Biodynamic approach. I saw it and worked in it on its 28th season, and it was quite the experience but was taken away by the cost only to realize that is perhaps the more accurate costs of remediation costs and that what we've been doing has been the artificially suppressed costs of horrible ecological damage that will soon have to be paid.

Just look at China, they're being pounded with floods compounded with COVID, a recent Swine Flu epidemic, and possible Bubonic Plague outbreak in Mongolia all which can impact and require the culling of large scale livestock, which in turn can impact the effects (capacity to carry costs of a farm) of horticulture as well.

Honestly, this reset needed to happen, and I just hope the West (unlike China who has actually had to spend 100s of billions in its contaminated farm land) has the Good Sense to be proactive about this and lead the way, because a significant amount of the Extinction Rebellion Gen Z kids era don't care or want the Carbon-based economy and are already opting out of School model entirely--labor and passionate talent is what is needed the most in that equation, the rest is pretty much already there its just a matter of collective Will.

Which means that unfunded-liabilities like SS and retirement funds, and pensions that rely on consumer based economies and taxes are not just unsustainable they're ready for imminent collapse due to the mass-unemployment and significant contraction in the consumer-based economy. I've come to realize that the Stock Market is essentially all smoke and mirrors, and doesn't reflect much of anything but a real-time gauge of 'how rich people happen to feel that day' and is mainly done with HFT based algorithms. (To base Food on this metric is absolute folly and should revert to a local economic model on a city level.)

Even being a big Tesla proponent, there is no way in hell why Tesla stock price reflects reality and could/should displace Toyota Motors in any way shape or form. Just the sheer scale of Toyota based cars they produce per year dwarfs Tesla's current and foreseeable supply combined, let alone those already on the roads now all over the World which is massive, and I imagine they could/will remain past the critical mass effect of EV because of their very high QC/QA, something Tesla has never actually been able to figure out and has overcome that shortcoming with Brand 'clout.'

So to summarize, its not just on paper: it has to happen as a matter of survival.