by Dennis T. Avery

About the author: Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, a public policy research organization headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The environmental movement is valid and important. Environmentalists are forcing us to recognize that we are increasingly capable of—and responsible for—saving natural resources. Nevertheless, though they recognize the problems, they do not always see clearly the solution strategies. In the case of agriculture in particular, they have come to exactly the wrong policy solutions.

Mankind is at the most critical moment in environmental history. What we do as people and societies in the next decade will determine whether we have a
more crowded but sustainable world to bequeath to future generations—or whether we...