People seem to take for granted that since agriculture is one of the oldest technologies, it must be a "solved problem" and our modern approach is optimal.

When in reality, modern industrial agriculture is one of the most ham fisted and naive approached to the problem: just bulldoze, fertilize, irrigate, and spray everything into submission. With many negative consequences of course, which we generally refer to as "unsustainable".

Because understanding all the complex relationships within an ecosystem, and then how to engineer it to yield surplus material for human use without intolerable negative consequences, is in fact a cutting edge and poorly grasped science.

The "biocultural legacy" is an empirical approach to this problem refined over milenia, which we would do well to understand and appreciate.