Pre-modern subsistence farmers were minimising the risk of starvation rather than maximising output, and their apparently backward practices are rational once that is understood.

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• It is false that the world needs no more food and only better distribution of the food it has. MGMichael Grunwald13 Jul 2025
• An economy running on muscle power has a hard and low ceiling on total production, because its only real input is land and the returns to more of it fall away fast. BDBret Devereaux26 Aug 2022
• The claim that higher yields backfire and end up increasing farmland is much weaker than the literature assumes. LBLinus Blomqvist13 Mar 2024
• A pre-modern countryside produces an enormous amount of food and almost no extractable surplus, which is the hard limit on everything the state above it can do. BDBret Devereaux24 Jul 2020
• Local self-provisioning cannot feed the world, because most people do not live within reach of enough fertile land. GMGeorge Monbiot4 Oct 2023

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