From Scientific American:
Agriculture has fueled the eruption of human civilization. Efficiently raised, affordable crops and livestock feed our growing population, and hunger has largely been banished from the developed world as a result. Yet there are reasons to believe that we are beginning to lose control of our great agricultural machine. The security of our food supply is at risk in ways more noxious than anyone had feared.
The trouble starts with crops. Orange groves in Florida and California are falling to fast-moving blights with no known cure. Cavendish-variety bananas the global standard, each genetically identical to the next will almost certainly be wiped out by emerging infectious disease, just as the Cavendish's predecessor was six decades ago. And as entomologists Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp describe in “Saving the Honey bee,” on page 40, a mysterious affliction has ravaged honeybee colonies around the U.S., jeopardizing an agricultural system that is utterly dependent on farmed, traveling hives to pollinate vast swaths of monoculture. The ailment may be in part the result of the stresses imposed on hives by this uniquely modern system.
Plants and animals are not the only ones getting sick, however. New evidence indicates that our agricultural practices are leading directly to the spread of human disease.
More here.