We have a world population of seven billion humans who all want to eat.  The big problem is you ain't seen nothing yet.  Pretty much no matter what any government does the world population is going to hit at least ten billion in about 100 years.  That is almost a 50% food demand increase.  Here are our choices:
1   Massive famines that starve several billion people to death such that we do not increase population.
2.  A world wide disease epidemic that kills several billion people.
3.  Possibly a nuclear war, althou wars are historically pretty poor at killing enough people to do much about population control.
4.  Continue to figure out how to maximize crop yields to minimize habitat loss.  But, under any circumstances habitat loss will be far worse than it is today if we are going to avoid item 1.

If we pursue item 4 as the solution that ten billion number for peak population will grow and make the problem worse.  Plus, if we pursue item 4 we will exhaust the known phosphate mines in the next 100 years.  That means no more phosphate fertilizer and crop yields will plummet looping us involuntarily back to choice 1.

Pesticides are not the problem.  Population is the problem.

Dick
 

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