US ag practices are in general very sustainable. Water management is arguably a major issue, but the US receives plenty of rainfall. It’s a distribution problem where mining water is currently cheaper than piping it across the country.
Soil is currently a major focus in modern farming. PH, drainage, aeration, etc etc are how farmers achieve extreme yields, but it’s all part of a large cost benefit analysis spending 10$ to make 9$ is simply wasted effort.
The next generation of farming progress will be maturing the science of interactions between fungal species and multiple plants in a soil ecosystem and commoditizing them into concrete things which can be measured and manipulated on an industrial scale.
Think “planting” fungus and fertilizing it to optimize specific species interactions and possibly multiple cropping to take advantage of plant-fungi-plant interactions.
Soil is currently a major focus in modern farming. PH, drainage, aeration, etc etc are how farmers achieve extreme yields, but it’s all part of a large cost benefit analysis spending 10$ to make 9$ is simply wasted effort.