In recent years personal injury attorneys and trial lawyers have attacked the food industry with numerous lawsuits alleging that these businesses should pay monetary damages to those who of their own accord consume too much of a legal safe product.

I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations officials thousands of scientists and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet oftentimes losing war on the food production front.

Because of technological limits there is a certain amount of food that we can produce per acre. If we were to have intensive greenhouse agriculture we could have much higher production.

Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can't be let off so easily for they are all farming by proxy.

I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.

With nine degrees of warming computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie. Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish. Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half severely curtailing food production.

Customers want good value but they care more than ever how food and clothing products are made.

As the earth spins through space a view from above the North Pole would encompass most of the wealth of the world - most of its food productive machines doctors engineers and teachers. A view from the opposite pole would encompass most of the world's poor.

To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.

My Food Network shows 'Emeril Live' and 'Essence of Emeril ' are not in production right now but I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily leaving Food Network. I have a lot of television still in me. I enjoy teaching people so it's just a matter of time before I do something new.