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OdinGuru t1_ir3i9fu wrote

Reply to comment by Mendicant__ in Global Agricultural Land Use v. Agricultural Production [OC] by rosetechnology

I don’t think anyone disagrees that yields have gone up due to increased efficiency. The point is that trying to measure that using $ value is flawed because yield increases can’t be separated from unit price changes. I do think it’s very unlikely that actual yields have increase by ~5x over 57 years, I doubt farming is THAT much better. From inflation alone we know that price for the same basket of goods has DEFINITELY gone up in that time. This data makes it impossible to know how much of one vs the other, you would need other data sets.

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Mendicant__ t1_ir54lmf wrote

People here are definitely claiming exactly that--that yields aren't really higher, we're just charging more for food.

Leaving that aside, crop yields, by weight, have doubled or tripled for a bunch of food staples in the time frame of this chart, and this chart also shows land used for agriculture going up for most of the run.

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