The world's population should be at most 50 million.

[The Grand Nudger]

If we agree that fossil fuel consumption is a global problem.  If we agree that our food systems are based start to finish on oil.  Let's talk about a post fossil fuel reality.

Who is going to do the work that all of those fossil fuel consuming machines and methodologies do?  If we want to phase out fossil fuels (and we all three do, I think, yes?), then we might want to hang a now hiring sign out right now and get a headstart on manpower.  Alternative methodologies are, as a rule..labor and management intensive.

As far as agriculture is concerned, we need to apply permaculture methods on a much larger scale.  Those include no-till farming, which cuts down on burning fossil fuels for both tilling and fertilizers, and helps sequester carbon to boot.  I'm not sure whether such methods require more labor.  I had assumed they were "working smarter, not harder."

Sure, -permaculture is one option..it's integrated ag (integrated with forestry) - but it's not nearly as productive as intensive management (best use would be marginal soils and personal property).  Intensive management is whats required to feed our population, and intensive management feeds it most efficiently even when the pop is small. Commercial ag and growing apples on a swale are not the same thing, nor will they ever be.

You can be absolutely sure that alternative ag is more labor intensive than conventional ag*.  All you need to do is check the total labor hours and cost.  For conventional feild grown lettuce, for example..you have 22 hours of labor at guest wages - yearly.  For the integreated system I was describing, you have 60 hours of labor..weekly, at 60k total cost yearly - and you can stuff at least five of those systems (and their attendant employees) on the same acre, to produce very nearly double the record yield of the conventional while simultaneously producing ten tons of fish.

You shouldn't need to look it up, though, because it should be obvious that tractors and chemicals are doing work that will still need to be done when we remove those tractors and chemicals from the picture. If we didn't go with some alternative or novel approach, and we wanted to keep growing in the fields....all of that petro-labor will have to be added to the total labor cost of the acre in human or "other" hours...otherwise, the result is yield loss.

*the best thing about the starving poor...is that the one thing they have alot of, hell, the only thing...is labor. The barriers to establishment that exist here due to our massive prior investment in the current system are less operative or non operative in developing countries. That's why I mentioned earlier that, even though they're being hit with the effects of climate change first and disproportionately, they are also best positioned for a different future.

As to smarter, not harder..they're doing both, ask em.