Regarding industrial farming it is more efficient than sustainable methods any where not just in the US for instance. Costs are even cheaper in the 3rd world if you can set up an operation there.
The costs being cheaper - yes, that stands to reason (although many key agricultural commodities are sourced globally, so I'm guessing mostly one means labour?).
Whether or not industrial farming is more efficient I think is more subject to debate - as it isn't sustainable - so how can it be more efficient long term? My understanding is the highest productivity can be realised by individuals micro-managing a piece of land - albeit that's a very labour intensive way to produce food. Computer controlled administration of irrigation and similar technologies may start to close that gap by tailoring intervention as precisely as possible to the very local conditions, rather than blanket application of moisture, fertiliser, pesticides etc.
That last area might also help manage with a lower level of fossil fuel inputs - though I think the problem is twofold, firstly a seriously heavy dependence on agro-chemicals to maintain higher yields, and a short term consumerist attitude where we don't really place any long term value on the land - it's simply another resource to exploit and consume. If it will be depleted in a century, who cares? (a small farmer in a family farming for many generations might, but a large corporation that thinks it can just buy more land might not).
Hedging of agricultural futures was originally implemented in order to lessen the risk of financial ruin to farmers. By hedging you could buy a price which guaranteed a profit but you then gave up the opportunity to sell that crop for more if the market went up. If the market went down you avoided a big loss. The purpose was to even out the good and bad years and thus avoid the bad years which could put you out of business. I think eliminating this market function would make growing the global grain supply much more difficult.
I'm going to have to go away and give that a bit of thought. The question I suppose is - when food prices soar - where is all the extra money being made? Farmers - or investment bankers?
We've got a financial class of parasites sitting at the top of the socioeconomic ladder, exerting undue influence upon the course of global affairs - notwithstanding that they don't produce a damn thing and can hardly be said to render a meaningful service either (beyond self enrichment and empowerment).
While I agree that, in a long-term sense, quick collapse is better than a collapse that happens a hundred years from now I don't see that there can be any way to implement it as "a sensible policy choice" as it would by almost definition be a genocidal policy. That might make rational sense, but not moral sense.
I'm not going to argue for the merits of a genocidal policy - but history teaches us such policies are perfectly likely to arise as the strong empowered populations try to survive at the expense of any or all others. They won't be doing so necessarily in terms of responding to climate change, more as a competition for resources which require power and influence to try to retain. In other words - the conflicts will look like business as usual (just the driving pressures will gradually become ever stronger).
Of course, if you are arguing for quick collapse then also arguing for an increase in global grain reserves is contradictory in a certain sense. Collapse will come quicker if we continue to eat lots of meat and burn corn in our cars after all.
I think we will continue to eat lots of meat and burn corn in cars - for the most part. Certainly we've managed to keep doing both in the face of common sense and plenty of evidence that the high resulting food prices are causing substantial social harm to others. To that extent my assessment of human behaviour lends to my expectation of relatively rapid and early collapse rather than being a policy hope.
If we were going to try a rational strategy for the species on a large scale, in my view we would fortify areas well within carrying capacity containing populations that had some notion of how to live sustainably and stockpile resources in those areas. The rest, we would let wither - while trying to achieve a softer landing and higher collapse floor in the more promising areas/peoples.
Question is - is that a genocidal policy, to the extent one permits suffering one in theory could try to alleviate? (I don't think it will happen either way - I think it's business as usual all the way to majority oblivion)