To argue that we need some technology in order to produce food to tackle hunger is completely blind to the facts on the ground. Actually, what we need is the exact opposite of what GMOs give us. We have to empower farmers to grow food for themselves and plant and grow their own seeds and use practices to deal with weeds and the need for fertility, not from purchased products like a seed or a chemical, but from their own farms, from their own knowledge and skill sets.

Courage is saying maybe what I'm doing isn't working, maybe I should try something else.

Even very progressive, informed people still get tongue-tied responding to the question, can organic and sustainably raised food still feed the world? A corollary to that question, and one we certainly hear a lot these days, is that genetically modified foods are better for the environment because they use fewer chemicals, which has been thoroughly debunked.

Part of what the food industry does with public relations, just like the chemical industry or the oil industry, is to try to erase their fingerprints from their messaging. So when consumers hear about a recent effort like the "food dialogues" put on by a group called the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, do they know necessarily that these "dialogues" are being funded by companies like Monsanto, a large chemical company and the controller of most of the patents on genetically modified seeds? No, they don't.

To argue that we need some technology in order to produce food to tackle hunger is completely blind to the facts on the ground. Actually, what we need is the exact opposite of what GMOs give us. We have to empower farmers to grow food for themselves and plant and grow their own seeds and use practices to deal with weeds and the need for fertility, not from purchased products like a seed or a chemical, but from their own farms, from their own knowledge and skill sets.

You could increase farmworker wages significantly and not change the price to the consumer at all - for instance, if you redistribute how revenue is paid out across the food chain. Labor costs, particularly farm labor, is a tiny portion of the price we pay at the supermarket.

The food industry is spending almost $2 billion a year marketing directly to children and teens. We know that those ads lead to children demanding certain brands, and we know that food and drink marketing gets all of us to consume more calories. If we're going to address diet-related illnesses, talking about marketing to kids is a key step. There should be places like schools that are protected sanctuaries from commercialization and from advertising, especially when it comes to kids' health.