Agriculture is a major agent of environmental change and since its inception c. 10,000 years ago it has caused the transposition of large areas of natural ecosystems into agricultural systems. As world population is set to increase from 5.7 × 109 to 8.3 × 109 in the next 25 years agriculture must meet the needs of these additional people. It can either expand, to cause the demise of yet more natural ecosystems and so impair the services they provide and accelerate extinctions, or existing agricultural systems can intensify production. Biotechnology can undoubtedly contribute to this intensification but it is not without environmental and social/economic risks.
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Antoinette M. Mannion (1998) studied this question.
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