One of today’s biggest environmental issues is how to curb the encroachment of farmland on natural habitats.

Agriculture significantly impacts climate change – more than transportation or industry and almost as much as electricity. To meet the global population’s food demands by 2050, scientists estimate that currently uncleared land, about double the size of India, will be necessary to produce about 50 percent more calories. This would destroy vast areas of the world’s forests and wetlands and increase carbon emissions.

In his latest book, We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate, Michael Grunwald discusses how ignoring the climate crisis at the center of our plates has only made it worse. In conversation with investigative journalist Christopher Leonard, author of three books, including The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business, Grunwald shares solutions scientists and entrepreneurs are considering, from a miracle tree called pongamia to Impossible Whoppers.

Grunwald, the bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, is a former staff writer for The Washington Post, Time, and POLITICO, and the recipient of several awards, including the George Polk Award for national reporting.

This event is part of the Watchdog Writers Group series, co-presented by the University of Missouri School of Journalism.