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In the 1970s, environmentalists and politicians in the imperial core quivered in their seats over the prospect of a population explosion.
在20世纪70年代，帝国核心区的环保主义者和政治家们为人口爆炸的前景颤抖不已。
Malthusian prophecies of total collapse and Thanos-esque proposals of racial extermination pervaded political thought.
马尔萨斯关于全面崩溃的预言和萨诺斯式的种族灭绝建议充斥着政治思想。
For many, it seemed the end of the world was at our doorstep, "our cities are going to be choked with people they're going to be choked with traffic they're going to be choked with crime",
对许多人来说，世界末日似乎就在我们家门口，“我们的城市将人满为患，将被交通堵塞，将被犯罪活动堵塞。”
and one of the main worries was that food production wouldn't be able to support the billions of mouths that would be born in the coming decades. "More famines and shortages".
主要的担忧之一是粮食生产将无法支持未来几十年内出生的数十亿人口。“更多的饥荒和短缺”。
But then the green revolution happened, and everything was supposedly better.
但后来绿色革命发生了，一切都朝着更好的方向发展。
Labor-saving technology and fossil fuel-laden chemicals pulled the world back from the precipice of famine and death.
节省劳动力的技术和充满化石燃料的化学品将世界从饥荒和死亡的悬崖边上拉了回来。
At least, that's the dominant narrative that has been pushed since the 1970s.
至少，这是自20世纪70年代以来一直被推崇的主流说法。
Today, though, we're going to deconstruct this story about industrial farming, and answer a nagging question: can small-scale regenerative farming feed the world?
不过，今天我们要解构这个关于工业化农业的故事，并回答一个烦人的问题：小规模的再生农业能否养活世界？
The so-called Green Revolution was a temporary patch on a much larger food system crisis.
所谓的绿色革命是对更大的粮食系统危机的暂时性修补。
If anything, the industrial farming explosion in the 1970s, which implemented new labor-saving technologies like combine harvesters, high-yield varieties like dwarf wheat and consolidation of farmland to increase global food production, seems to have done more harm than good.
如果说20世纪70年代的工业化农业爆炸，实施了联合收割机、诸如矮秆小麦等高产品种等节省劳动力的新技术，并整合农田以提高全球粮食产量，似乎是弊大于利。
Part of this has to do with the fact that the Green Revolution substituted the cost of labor with that of fossil fuels.
部分原因是绿色革命用化石燃料的成本替代了劳动力的成本。
Instead of endless hours on the farm, landholders just used fossil fuels to power their harvesters, tillers, and develop synthetic fertilizers.
土地所有者不再在农场上无休止地工作，而只是用化石燃料来驱动他们的收割机、耕作机，并开发合成肥料。
For an aging farming population, this was great news.
对于老龄化的农业人口来说，这是个好消息。
You could get the same yields you were getting before, and only have to work two weeks in the spring and two in the fall.
你只需要在春天和秋天各工作两周，就可以获得与以前相同的产量。
For the soil, the atmosphere, and the insect and bird populations, however, this new industrial agriculture spelled disaster.
然而，对于土壤、大气以及昆虫和鸟类种群来说，这种新的工业化农业意味着灾难。
As a result of the tireless tilling practices of industrial agriculture, which churns up and kills the fragile microbiome and organic matter of the topsoil, the health of conventionally tilled soil is now diminishing at more than twice the rate that it's regenerating, a crisis which leading soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal describes in one word: "bleak."
由于工业化农业不知疲倦的耕作方式，搅碎并杀死了脆弱的微生物群和表层土壤的有机物，现在传统耕作的土壤的健康状况正以其再生速度的两倍以上在减少，这种危机被著名的土壤科学家拉坦-拉尔博士用一个词形容：“暗淡”。
Our new fossil fuel agriculture, embodied in the miles of corn and soybean monocultures in the heartland of the United States and now being pushed on the imperial periphery by agribusiness giants like Bayer-Monsanto and Syngenta, has also meant a significant greenhouse gas emissions, to the tune of 24% of our total global yearly gas emissions.
我们新的化石燃料农业，体现在美国中心地带绵延数英里的玉米和大豆单一种植区，现在又被拜耳-孟山都和先正达这样的农业综合企业巨头推到了帝国的外围，这也意味着大量的温室气体排放，达到了我们全球每年温室气体排放总量的24%。
And on top of that, industrial agriculture is killing waves of insects and birds, and crushing the bodies of farmworkers and prisoners forced to work grueling harvesting hours for little or no pay.
除此以外，工业化农业还杀死了一波又一波的昆虫和鸟类，并压碎了被迫在艰苦的收割时间内工作的农场工人和囚犯的身体，而他们的工资却很少或没有。
We stomach the mounting toll of industrial agriculture because it's supposedly feeding the world.
因为据说它在养活世界我们忍受着工业化农业带来的越来越多的损失。
Yet, most of the monocropped farmlands in the imperial core don't directly produce the food going into our mouths.
然而，帝国核心区的大部分单一作物农田并不直接生产进入我们口中的食物。
Most often the vast fields of corn get churned into animal feed, fuel, or various sugars and additives that do eventually reach our mouths, but in an extremely roundabout way.
大多数情况下，大片的玉米田被搅拌成动物饲料、燃料或各种糖类和添加剂，最终到达我们的嘴里，但却是以一种极其迂回的方式。
Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa, also known as AGRA, an initiate back by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation, reveals industrial farming’s failure to feed the world: "In the countries where AGRA operates, there's been a 30% increase in the number of people who are suffering hunger, and the agricultural productivity is kind of the same as it was before AGRA began."
非洲绿色革命联盟，又称AGRA，是由比尔-盖茨和洛克菲勒基金会发起的，揭示了工业化农业无法养活世界的事实：“在AGRA运作的国家，遭受饥饿的人数增加了30%，而农业生产力与AGRA开始之前的情况差不多。”
Indeed large-scale industrialized agricultural endeavors only account for 50% of global food production.
事实上大规模工业化的农业努力只占全球粮食生产的50%。
And it's the farms that are producing the other 50% that we must look towards for an escape route out of our current unsustainable capitalist farming system.
而正是那些生产另外50%的农场，我们必须寻找一条逃离我们目前不可持续的资本主义农业系统的途径。
