February 18: Nathan McClintock
Nathan McClintock’s work is the intersection of geography, agroecology, and planning, with a focus on urban agriculture in the low-income “flatlands” of Oakland, California. As part of this “applied political (agro)ecology”, he’s working with community-based food justice organizations to inventory vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland and assess its potential to contribute to a more resilient and equitable food system. He has co-taught an urban agriculture course in the UC Berkeley Student Organic Garden and is working on a long-term project that draws on recent research and work in Mali, Senegal, Bangladesh, Nepal, Haiti, Mexico, and Brazil.

Feb. 11: Patrick Vinck
Patrick Vinck is an agricultural engineer who specializes in rural development. He holds a Ph.D. in international development. He has worked and conducted research in Iraq, Rwanda, Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and other areas affected by armed conflict. He directs the The Initiative for Vulnerable Populations at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley. When he visited the class, he talked about food security after conflict and defined the elements of food security.

Dec. 1: Roger Thurow
Roger Thurow is a Wall Street Journal reporter and co-author, along with fellow Journal reporter Scott Kilman, of Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. Thurow has been foreign correspondent for twenty years and has reported from more than sixty countries, including two dozen in Africa. On his visit, he explained how Enough came to be as a book and imparted his knowledge on covering Africa as a journalist.

Nov. 10: Ted Miguel
Ted Miguel is an economics professor and director of the Center of Evaluation for Global Action (CEGA) at UC Berkeley. Miguel’s main research focus is on African economic development. His focus includes the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; and interactions between health, education, and productivity for the poor. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and India. His forthcoming book, Africa’s Turn?, tracks a decade of comparably hopeful economic trends throughout sub-Saharan Africa and suggests that a turnaround may be emerging. During his talk, Miguel spoke about agricultural recovery after civil wars and shocks, and warned that there could be more civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa unless African governments employ more insurance mechanisms to help out farmers.

Oct. 29: Raj Patel
Raj Patel has worked for the World Bank, interned at the WTO, consulted for the U.N. and been involved in international campaigns against his former employers. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved, which is a story about the global food system and why there are one billion overweight people and nearly a billion people going hungry. He is currently a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley. On his visit to the class, Patel spoke about South African food and supermarkets.

Oct. 22: Arif Gamal
Arif Gamal is a professor of biology at the College of Marin. Gamal has done extensive work on pesticides, civil society, human rights and public health in African agriculture. On his visit to the class, Gamal spoke about his work on insect pests and gum arabic trees in Western Sudan and how his findings could serve as a model for agriculture throughout the rest of the continent.

Oct. 15: Michael Kevane
Michael Kevane is a professor of economics at Santa Clara University. He is the author of Women and Development in Africa, which explores gender issues in the context of Africa’s generally poor economic performance. On his visit to the class, Kevane spoke about his most recent research on gender issues in African smallholder agriculture.

Oct. 8: Leslie Gray
Leslie Gray is a geographer and professor at Santa Clara University who teaches classes that emphasize global environment, development and population issues. Her current research considers the environmental and equity dimensions surrounding global cotton production, focusing on how the agricultural subsidies given to farmers in wealthy countries affect poor farmers in West Africa. On her visit to the class, Gray spoke about cotton production and fair trade in West Africa.

Oct. 6: Peggy Lemaux
Peggy Lemaux is a professor in the plant genetics department at UC Berkeley. Her research efforts focus on the use of genetic engineering and genomic technologies to understand, manipulate and improve cereal crops, like wheat, barley, rice and sorghum. On her visit to the class, Lemaux explained classical breeding and genetic engineering and what roles they play for genetically modified food.

Sept. 17: Miguel Altieri
Miguel Altieri is a professor of agroecology in the department of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley. His teaching and research interests focus on agroecology and on the role of biodiversity in pest management. On his visit to the class, Altieri spoke about food aid policy and its connection to multinational corporations and efforts to incorporate the poor into solutions for addressing hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sept. 10: Alain de Janvry
Alain de Janvry is a professor of agriculture and resource economics at UC Berkeley working on international economic development, with expertise principally in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East, and the Indian subcontinent. He has worked with many international development agencies, including FAO, IFAD, the World Bank, UNDP, ILO, the CGIAR, and the Inter-American Development Bank as well as foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller and Kellogg. On his visit to the class, de Janvry spoke gave a historical overview on agriculture and development theory in the Third World and showed and showed how a new paradigm for agricultural development is emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sept. 3: Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. On his visit to the class, Pollan spoke on the politics of feeding the world, genetically modified food and the idea of a new Green Revolution in Africa.