This model is not even vaguely allergic to agriculture, but it is focused on providing food for local people in a sustainable manner rather than engaging in high-volume agricultural trade.
Localizing agriculture would be quite expensive in terms of resources, as would phasing out existing engineered varieties. I'd focus on removing current farm subsidies, which tend to overly promote factory-style agribusiness, and plow more resources into preserving existing varieties of crops and livestock. Other than that, though, I don't think changes are warranted.
Localizing agriculture would be quite expensive in terms of resources, as would phasing out existing engineered varieties.
Terms of the thought experiment: I get to wave my hands and change society to look like something else, absent trasnhumanist technological favorites. If it's expensive, it's okay in this situation to assume that the investment is made anyway.
Assume for the time being that it will forever remain beyond the scope of science to change Human Nature. AGI is also impossible, as is Nanotech, BioImmortality, and those things.
Douglas Adams mice finished their human experiment, giving to you, personally, the job of redesigning earth, and specially human society, according to your wildest utopian dreams, but you can't change the unchangeables above.
You can play with architecture, engineering, gender ratio, clothing, money, science grants, governments, feeding rituals, family constitution, the constitution itself, education, etc... Just don't forget if you slide something too far away from what our evolved brains were designed to accept, things may slide back, or instability and catastrophe may ensue.
Finally, if you are not the kind of utilitarian that assigns exactly the same amount of importance to your desires, and to that of others, I want you to create this Utopia for yourself, and your values, not everyone.
The point of this exercise is: The vast majority of folk not related to this community that I know, when asked about an ideal world, will not change human nature, or animal suffering, or things like that, they'll think about changing whatever the newspaper editors have been writing about last few weeks. I am wondering if there is symmetry here, and folks from this community here do not spend that much time thinking about those kinds of change which don't rely on transformative technologies. It is just an intuition pump, a gedankenexperiment if you will. Force your brain to face this counterfactual reality, and make the best world you can given those constraints. Maybe, if sufficiently many post here, the results might clarify something about CEV, or the sociology of LessWrongers...