The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive...

Within the past ten years, environmental economics has witnessed the development of a theory that has stirred up considerable controversy. The environmental Kuznets hypothesis predicts negative environmental impact first increases with rising income and then decreases. A wealth of indicators...