How will chemists of the future balance competing concerns of environmental stewardship and innovative, cost-effective product development? For chemists to accept the idea that environmental quality and economic prosperity can be intertwined, the concept of the food-energy-water nexus must first be integrated into underlying thought processes. provides today’s scientists with the background information necessary to fully understand the inextricable link between food, energy and water and how this conceptual framework should form the basis for all contemporary research and development in chemistry in particular, and the sciences in general.