Before the advent of agriculture, humans fed themselves by hunting and gathering. Hunter-gatherer societies tend to function quite differently from agricultural societies. Arguably, historically, with agriculture came kingdoms, wars, slavery, and overpopulation. In 1987, [Jared Diamond wrote an interesting essay on the question](http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race).

Could it be different? Could one envision a technologically advanced society¹ that does not do agriculture at all — but still relies on hunting and gathering for feeding the population?

**Edit:** By *agriculture*, I mean to actively change and manage land for the intelligent² purpose producing of food or other products (wood, rubber, leather) with a significantly higher yield than would occur naturally. Examples include (but are not limited to) clearing land to grow crops, irrigation, livestock domestication. For the scope of this question I do not consider limited forestry (cutting wood in a naturally growing forest, as opposed to planting forests for wood production) or managed hunting (limiting hunting to prevent species extinction, or hunting competing carnivores such as wolves) to be agriculture. I admit that there are grey zones in this definition (one might speculate on how to categorise [in-vitro meat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat)).

---

¹For the scope of this question, I will arbitrarily define *technologically advanced* as *being able to launch a satellite into orbit*.

²Some activities may lead to enhanced food production as a side-effect. For example, water lilies do well in [beaver ponds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_dam), but beavers probably don't actively plan this, so I do not consider it agriculture for the scope of this question.