Combine harvesters follow a yield-centric, oil-hungry model of agriculture, using wheat bred specifically to be harvested with a combine. If we want to fix food systems we need to embrace food and soil biodiversity, and so far, most wheat varieties that do that require less intensive forms of harvest, not necessarily manual, but not a large combine either.
The problem is that through like 98% of human history, the solution has been to throw human labor at the problem, with most innovations improving labor efficiency or making farm work less harsh. With the advent of the industrial revolution the peasantry was proletarianized and forced to move to the cities, leaving whoever was left to do agriculture to apply the same profit motive to agriculture, instead of imagining a more human-sized agriculture.
Combine harvesters follow a yield-centric, oil-hungry model of agriculture, using wheat bred specifically to be harvested with a combine. If we want to fix food systems we need to embrace food and soil biodiversity, and so far, most wheat varieties that do that require less intensive forms of harvest, not necessarily manual, but not a large combine either.
The problem is that through like 98% of human history, the solution has been to throw human labor at the problem, with most innovations improving labor efficiency or making farm work less harsh. With the advent of the industrial revolution the peasantry was proletarianized and forced to move to the cities, leaving whoever was left to do agriculture to apply the same profit motive to agriculture, instead of imagining a more human-sized agriculture.