It’s not black and white though; saying fields are biodiverse is an erroneous simplification.

Fields can be biodiverse, but pushing for increased production inherently drives that down. Big ag will make the field deadly to anything other than the target crop to make conditions most favorable to that crop.

We grow subsistence levels of rice each year and choose methods that promote biodiversity. Our paddies and surrounding areas are host to all sorts of life; fish, frogs, snails, crabs, all that attract their own predictors. But even something that seems like table stakes such as using a combine to harvest instead of harvesting by hand is destructive to the ecosystem of the paddy.

…but then imagine if all the rice in the world was harvested by hand instead of by machine. Would it even be productive enough to supply the world? It’s unimaginably more time consuming.