"Experts" have been painting doom and gloom scenarios about our capacity to feed the planet's increasing population for, at the very least, centuries. And yet, here we are, over seven billion people...
Food production (and world hunger) is, first and foremost, an economic problem. Arable land is unevenly distributed. Capital and means of production is unevenly distributed. Agronomic expertise is unevenly distributed. Population is unevenly distributed. Logistical expertise and capacities are unevenly distributed.
When farmers keep using the same old practices, no matter what, because that's the only thing they know, that's waste. When farmers have great fields, but no machinery to work it, that's waste. When farmers have great yields, but no warehouse to preserve it, that's waste. When farmers have great grains, but no fertilizers to boost growth, that's waste. When great lands are turned into housing neighborhood, that's waste. There is a LOT of waste in the world. And the answer to it, and world hunger, is not potential, it's $. You'd think that countries with a lot of hunger would waste less than us perfect-food-obsessed north-americans, right? Wrong. Waste is atrocious in third-world countries. It just wastes elsewhere. It is wasted because, for the same amount of seeds, they will get a lot less yields and require a lot more labor. It is wasted because they lack the funds to invest in warehouses to keep the food in controlled atmospheres. Because the distribution networks are inferior.
Conventional or organic has nothing to do with it. All farmers in the world could be organic and we could still significantly increase global food yields. After all, there is a vast array of alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. In most cases, even the local small-scale organic hippy north-american farm will significantly outproduce third-world farms. We've got the best seeds. The means to analyze our soils, to analyze our compost and manure. We've got the machinery to work the ground properly. The fertilizers to optimize growth. The agronomists to scientifically evaluate best practices. The vast array of pesticides, both organic and not. Refrigerated trucks. The capacity to find and ship to far-away customers via the internet for premium prices. The tunnels to protect crops from bad weather. And so on.
I don't think many people realize just how productive our farms have become, and how third-world farms could very well obtain the same levels of productivity if only they had access to the same resources and markets. There is plenty of room for global production to rise, with or without GMO crops.