Food can be produced under a number of technological conditions. Some observers hold that modern crop production technologies, typified by those embodied in the Green Revolution, are so intensive in the use of external inputs that they damage the environment and so are not sustainable. Those observers argue that "alternative" technologies that use fewer, safer external inputs mark the path toward agricultural sustainability. But the question arises: will those alternative technologies permit increases in global food production on the required scale? In this paper, we address this question and the conflicting arguments regarding the answer.