Frances Seymour, former Director General of CIFOR, gave the keynote address of the Conference of Yale Chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters after an introduction by Sir Peter Crane. The talk, entitled “Forests and food security: Questions and quandaries” gave an overview of some of the many challenges of conserving nature and alleviating hunger while increasing social well-being. Forests have many functions on different geographic scales. Forests have positive impacts on the farm- and the landscape-level, and also a continental and global scale. Services provided by forests reach from habitat and pollination, to water and materials, to climate regulation and climate change mitigation, to mention only a few. There is still a lack of appreciation of the many ways in which forests contribute to food security. Increasing agricultural production…