Moo. Corn. Moo Corn. (So sorry about the rainforests!)

History records that previous commodity booms were not followed by mass starvation, resource wars and the end of civilization. John Atkin is out to make sure it doesn't happen again.

An agricultural zoologist by training, he serves as chief operating officer for crop protection at Switzerland's Syngenta, a competitor to the U.S. giant Monsanto in the controversial business of agricultural technology.

Of the recent surge in prices for all manner of foodstuffs, he says don't blame biofuels. Coffee and frozen orange juice are up, and they don't go into your gas tank or compete for land with ethanol-related crops. Iron ore, copper and most nonfarm commodities are up too. And whatever the errors of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, the biggest factor may be a simple failure of optimism about the global economy. Every CEO's mental map now includes India and China, yet somehow the whole spectrum of natural resources producers failed to invest sufficiently to meet the demand of several hundred million new consumers.

Mr. Atkin cites a United Nations forecast that, by 2030, food production will have to have increase 50%, partly to feed a bigger world population and partly to supply the richer, more varied diets demanded by the newly affluent of the developing world.