The agricultural crisis is one of a completely logistical nature. We have more than enough of the appropriate technology to be able to do things like setting up biogas powered waste treatment facilities.

We have the ability, and tools to restore our environments in a reliably profitable manner. We just choose not to because we are subsumed in a corporate peer-pressure culture that stresses short-term gains over long-term.

Agriculture as we practice it now began in WWII when the need for potable food products soared and the already massive organic farms at the time couldn't catch up with demand. That's why it took hold in the first place. The corporations that made money from all this also made sure it stayed.

Even if you can prove without at a doubt that spraying plants with expensive pesticides, saturating their roots with water and fertilizer, 98% which runs off and pollutes rivers and creeks is somehow more sensible than utilizing basic farming techniques to get back to arable land, it doesn't matter.

Even if our conventional agriculture system, as it currently is, the most efficient food production mode in existence, it's still based on the fossil fuel economy, which is based on a finite resource, which is going to go away whether you like it or not.

It isn't a question of which method of food production is more efficient or faster anymore. We are well past handwringing about statistics here. The world is drying up, and the resource our food system primarily runs on is almost totally depleted. We can either adapt to more sustainable production models ASAP or we keep debating the merits of sustainable production models around in circles until the fossil fuels market collapses and everyone begins to starve because grain isn't being produced any more.