National Research Council study quoted in article: "A well-managed alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms."

There's a certain disingenuousness in this rhetoric. A skilled, professional bicycle frame builder can build a frame that's stronger with less materials than the frames that come out of semi-automated plants in Korea. But that doesn't mean the framebuilder is "more efficient".

Industrial agriculture is far more efficient in terms of labor. That's what matters in the process of transforming society. Notably, the labor freed up by industrial agriculture can be used to very efficiently accumulate more resources to be put into agriculture and even more knowledge.

Which isn't to say small scale farms don't some virtues but let's be clear what's going on.