The Big Two-O-Five-O

 Around 2050, the global human population will peak at around 9.3 billion, higher than the current world population by 30%. This means 30% more mouths to feed, cars to fuel, and bodies to clothe. Most of the world’s arable land is already in production. There will therefore be no choice but to push further into marginal lands. According to the United Nations Atlas of Desertification (Middleton and Thomas, 1997), over half of the world’s arid and semi-arid lands have been affected by desertification. Likewise, there will be no choice but evermore marginal efficiency; to abandon our pet projects for that less ideal; to come to know the conflicts between organic and synthetic, conservative and intensive, traditional and engineered, only as relics of the past.

I can imagine that the world might look like an odd mixture of visions for 2050:

• Research still probing for the ultimate in drought-resistance, pest-resistance, yield without complaint, and rapidity; as much as trade-offs and genetic components allow.
• Resiliency, generosity, and low demand still characterizing that ideal crop. 
• Homogenization still causing heated debate. In the pursuit of mechanization, uniformity paying the pretty price of resiliency. 
• Diversity still insuring against change. 
• Banks and bomb-proof vaults safekeeping the world's DNA. 
• Gains in yield reaching an asymptote. Gains in population, too, reaching an asymptote.
• Movements geared toward sustainable systems in spite of intensive systems evolving or else serving an increasingly marginal base. 
• "Lifestyle"-oriented agriculture forever swamped by the business of feeding 9 billion people.
• Remote-sensing becoming to agriculture what is the cell phone today. 
• Who Killed the Myco-Diesel -- or Biohydrogen -- or Synfuel Car? may be an appropriate movie title. 
• New definitions for property such as water, airspace, etc., encompassing the value of improvement..."modification" -- maybe "technologically modified resources".
• Capping, tracing, and trading, non-renewables, non- recyclables, non-recycled recyclables.
• Footprinting methane and phosphate and acid rain, for profit as much as for protection.
• Breeding proposals necessitating contingency plans for termination. 
• NAIS-like systems developing for the domain of patent law regulation. 
• Patent protection becoming automated; not unlike camera-enhanced enforcement of traffic violations.

Some of this may be a little out there. It is good to remember that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. Assuming that the pace of technology keeps up, in 2050, the world of agriculture should be, at least, a more regulated and orderly place.