A [Soylent?] Green New World

This week the Wall Street Journal has an in depth report titled "Innovations in Agriculture".  Although most of the WSJ is behind a paywall, I think the whole report is available for free (for now).   The stories are wide ranging, but focus largely on technological innovations to improve the efficiency, and perhaps arguably--the sustainability of agriculture.  The picture above is from a story on large scale vertical farming in cities.  There are also stories on robotic field hands, the most effective no-till strategies, developing perennial versions of wheat, using water more efficiently, as well as a number of other stories. 

There is a long tradition of using technology to achieve sustainability, even among "hippies".  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog

But many folks harbor mistrust of technological approaches, particularly when applied to agriculture.  These suspicions have perhaps been most notably apparent in the debate over GMO technologies.  For these folks, parts of the WSJ report may read more like something out of Soylent Green.What do you think should be the role of technology in developing a future agriculture?  How about the related question of the role of "capital" in agriculture....exemplified by the industrialists, bankers, venture capitalists, and stock traders who form the bulk of the readership of the WSJ?