Re

> dramatically reduce world hunger is a direct consequence of humans' capacity to improve crop yields such as rice and corn through breeding and engineering.

and

> the technical plant wizardry that prevented the starvation of millions of people.

What exactly are you referring to? In my mind, crop domestication and selective breeding is what allowed population growth, not what prevented starvation. In other words, population grew thanks to the increase in production, rather than the increase coming to combat decline. Was that a wrong notion?