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To affordably feed the next billion people, we must have higher-yielding crops with even greater nutritional value. America should be at the vanguard of the innovative advances that will make this happen.

The question is not only what is grown but what it's used for. There's not going to be a mass transformation of dietary habits in rich countries-on the contrary, the first thing people do when they become more prosperous is to buy more meat.

The benefits of a healthier diet are far-reaching because they also equate to fewer animals being bred into inhumane factory farm conditions and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

The USDA is not our ally here. We have to take matters into our own hands, not only by advocating for a better diet for everyone - and that's the hard part - but by improving our own. And that happens to be quite easy. Less meat, less junk, more plants.

The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families.

Agriculture as we know it needs to disappear. We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature.

The reasons for food insecurity are many and varied. But part of the problem is the global farming systems.

Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty.

The astounding variety of foods on offer in the modern supermarket obscures the fact that the actual number of species in the modern diet is shrinking. For reasons of economics, the food industry prefers to tease its myriad processed offerings from a tiny group of plant species, corn and soybeans chief among them.