The concept that people should be putting their labors toward the Earth’s resources rather than toward extraction and consumptionism is not new. It’s just becoming inevitable in a quantitative sense: you only have so much earth and we keep putting more people into cities and fewer on the land. Industrialized extraction techniques only function if there is something to extract.

Farming isn’t the problem any more than capitalism is: consumerism makes people stupid. The opposite of consumption is generosity, not frugality. People don’t see the real cost of consumerism at the decision point, so the decline continues. A few people and organizations are nobly trying to establish and learn better ways, but as long as the majority don’t have to live from labors in the dirt, that majority won’t care about dirt.