People who point out that it is in fact high yield & high risk, tend to be accused of being anti-progress luddites.

Ah, but you are not identifying new risks. The risks are obvious.... IF you think that way. It's almost a politicaly argument, where some people are just convinced there is no systemic risk. To others is it obvious. I don't know why this has become such a polarized topic.

But the result is people who talk about systemic risk are often accused of being luddites. As if their view is not based on facts but on politics.

The alternative itself is also obvious, it is to grow a large variety of wheat strains. This however would reduce yields. And it seems that most societies prefer to bear the systemic risk... for now.

The preference for systemic risk might be political. Because there's still a lot of hungry people in the world, because farm lobbies like mono-culture, it may even be a rational preference for all I know.

There are ways to deal with systemic risk. I think the best defense is to simply stockpile 2+ years of food for every person in the US by saving a portion of the increased yield.

EX: Wide scale contamination of the food supply, War etc.

Before the green revolution there were a lot of very different wheat varieties around the world. In fact, if my memory is correct, during the selective breeding for high yields one of the breakthroughs came from a thick and sturdy stalked dwarf wheat from Japan. The stalk genes it had produced a stalk strong enough to carry the new large yields.

The point being, we used to have a large variety of geno and phenotype around the world, and now we don't.