Lester R. Brown

Lester R. Brown is president of the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit institute that raises awareness about global environmental problems. In the following viewpoint, excerpted from his book Who Will Feed China": Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet, Brown contends that as China’s population grows, valuable cropland will be lost to industrialization. The country will have to import increasing amounts of grain to feed its people, which will lead in turn to worldwide increases in the price of food. China’s food shortages will become the world’s food shortages, Brown argues, thus sending a “wake-up call” to the rest of the world about the serious global problem of overpopulation.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. In Brown’s view...