In a recent post i have been told that food forest are a fantasy and traditional automated agriculture is better. Can someone provide sources for either why permaculture and food forest are better or why traditional agriculture is better. I want to learn more about the topic.
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It depends on the assumptions.
Food Forests and permaculture are better in principle but cannot meet the demands of the market as is today. It realistically needs a restructure of the whole foodsector from frame of mind (what should we eat?), to farm (do these have the knoweldge?), to fork (who knows how to process all these new foods?) back to farm (how do we get the nutrients after consumption back into the soil?) to be as good as it promises. But if these changes are made as well, food forests and permaculture are the way to go.
The current systems and markets are not made with food forests and permaculture in mind. That's why some people argue that they are a fantasy - they cannot imagine a change in societal trends which are not based on growth of current demands.
I can see that point, im someone who thinks that we need large scale structural change in most parts of our lives and i love to speculate about solutions. If a solution seems atleast on papee better than what we have such as (permaculture compared to modern industrail agriculture) i try to build around that better idea rather than fitting it into the current system since those ideas don't compliment eachother.
Tl;dr we should change our society to accomodate permaculture for its ecological merrits rather than integrated into the rest of our modern system and blame it when it fails.