Feeding the world’s growing population will be quite a task in the coming decades, but your main leader on the topic astonishes by the stark simplicity of its advice (“How to Feed the World,” November 21, 2009). Governments need to improve two things: the productive capacity of agriculture and the operation of food markets. The productive capacity can be improved in many ways, but one of them stands out: developing genetically modified (GM) crops that, among other things, use less water. At this point you refer to your briefing about Monsanto’s achievements with GM crops (“The Parable of the Sower”), in which you mention DuPont and Syngenta, its main rivals, only in passing. Although you do not refer to it in the main leader, an article in the International Section addresses, albeit rather vaguely, the insidious distrust of global food markets (“If Words Were Food, Nobody Would Go Hungry”). Your advice thus boils down to a straightforward proposition: leave the world’s hungry to Monsanto. Or am I missing something?