The man who created the Gaia Hypothesis (as a metaphor, not new age religion) has assumed that we are past the tipping point, and to reduce a cataclysmic human dieoff by the end of the century genetic manipulation of amost all of our food sources will be absolutely necessary, including growing much of our food in vats.
A companion piece to this is Dirt, the Erosion of Civilization. His salient point is that with the tremendous loss of agricultural land already documented, and other seemingly unstoppable trends available land for crops per person WILL drop to a level at which no foreseeable improvements in farming can compensate for.
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