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With agriculture, there are some absolute physical constraints to production, although I think in a fully rationalized world, we would still be some ways from encountering those constraints.
Another thing with agriculture is that often short-run high productivity can be inimical to long-run optimal productivity. With suitable conditions one can get a win-win (such as in 18th cent. Britain), but in other environments short-run boosts can result in soil loss or aquifer depletion, etc.
A third thing is that global farm market liberalization might not benefit smallholders in developing countries. If speculators take advantage of liberalized markets to acquire large holdings in poor countries, the results could be economically perverse.
Fourth, it's not a good thing to have motor vehicle owners in developed countries competitively bidding for the same crops against hungry people in poorer countries. Someone like me can easily outbid some poor wretch in the suburbs of Lagos. Oh, sure it might trickle down to him at some point, but he'll probably die before that happens.
So I don't see market liberalization, at least in the classical sense, as a panacea to any future world food crisis.
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