This is all very well for the wealthy minority like you and me. The majority these days live in high rise apartments or edge-of-city slums and shanty towns. Where are they to garden?

We live in a very real catch 22: improvements in agricultural productivity has helped facilitate huge increases in population, and an acceleration in migration from rural areas to cities. Without the co-ordination of production and distribution managed by those big corporations most of those city dwellers would starve. Malthus was correct. The planet keeps finding ways to feed more people but there is a limit and we are perillously close to it.