Saving the planet depends on a new agriculture

“Global economic growth over the past half-century has changed our world unrecognisably, driving exponential improvements in health, knowledge and standards of living. Yet this has come at a huge cost to nature and the stability of Earth’s operating systems that sustain us. Since 1970, global GDP has increased four times, the extraction of living materials from nature has tripled and the world’s human population has doubled, along with an enormous trend towards urbanisation. People living in cities now account for 50% of the global population.

Trade has exploded; the value of exports rose 200-fold from 1970 to 2017, with the largest increases in developed countries. This boom has enabled higher-income countries to increase their consumption even though