I am well aware that the productivity is not "bad" and that there isn't a net shortage. That doesn't imply we don't need the improvement, or that it won't have a significant impact.

I'd refrain from calling people naive. Farmers would call your approach naive as they know that every promile of productivity counts and can make or break their investment. As you said, this is very unintuitive and it's hard to imagine how much can a tiny increase of productivity at the base level change at the output - but it really is a lot.