Hmmm...I don't believe these are our only 2 choices. In Biodinamic farming planting a very biodiverse farm can work better than either of the above choices.
The one thing you have a litstle wrong here is thinking that GMO = nonuse of pesticide/herbicide. GMO corn & wheat was created to be resistant to Roundup usage, because the Roundup would have killed it along with the pests. I'm not a fan at the rate at which we adopt GMO crops, we still don't know their long term effects on animals, on people, and on the earth.
Oh no, don't get me wrong that those are our only options, but those are our only options that are in widespread use and likely to see widespread use any time soon. The vast majority of people farming are looking to get yeild, at all reasonable (their own definition of reasonable) costs (and I grew up on a farm so I can say that!) And Guinlilly I totally agree that GMO doesn't mean no pesticides - just that GMO is often an alternative and could be more of one in the future (developing crops that don't need pesticides/herbicides is a major focus of modern GMO).
Like I said above, GMO is dangerous as all hell, don't mistake me on that. But it is leading towards less poisons being used, and when it's the difference between life and death, extreme poverty and getting by, people are 99.9999999% of the time going to chose GMO or poisons or both. GMO has saved easily hundreds of thousands of human lives, whether it ends up killing even more of us in the long term is another question.
This isn't something I say lightly, I called it "pandora's box" for a good reason. But it's also something I've done a LOT of research on (initially for an essay and then it just turned into endless digging for personal curiosity).
GMO is here to stay, the vast majority of our food is already GMO and this planet is already heading towards a major humanbeing die-off, and everything I've learned has lead me to believe GMO is the least bad of all the horribly wrong roads we're
going to go down (note that I say "going to" not "could") anyways. Trust me, I was initially very anti-GMO!
EDIT: and I know in the leftwing treehugger crowd (which is my crowd! So those terms are NOT meant insultingly!) this isn't a common opinion. I don't like having to have this opinion, we should just be a more responsible species... but we're not. And we're not going to be any time soon is the safe bet. Trying to get rid of GMO or even slow down it's use is a lost cause, has been for 30 years, it's time to focuss that energy into other areas that we're doing even more damage in is my point. We can fight a thousand losing battles at once, or pick them one at a time and start winning them.