Ndiogou Fall
Founding President, Network of Peasant and Agricultural Producer Organizations of West Africa (ROPPA)
Nora McKeon
Formerly responsible for FAO-civil society relations; author of publications on small farmers and food policies
Philip McMichael
Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University
Robert Paarlberg
Adjunct Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College
Moderated by
Peter O’Driscoll
Executive Director, ActionAid USA
Monday, November 8
5.00 pm – 6.30 pm
Bell Hall (5th floor, Belfer Building) Harvard Kennedy School
The food price crisis of 2007 revealed major structural factors that drive hunger and poverty, and the lack of a global forum for decision making about food security. A range of actors, initiatives and investments – from the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA) to the U.S. government’s new Feed the Future initiative and the reformed Committee on World Food Security – are focused on addressing food insecurity against the backdrop of climate change. This seminar seeks to highlight the views of African small holder food producers and the experience of civil society in the broader debate about the strategies and governance required to effectively end hunger in Africa.
Organized by the Humanitarian & Development NGOs Domain of Practice at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
Panelist
Bios
Ndiogou Fall
is a Senegalese farmer who has participated actively in
building up the West African small farmer movement. He was
the founding President of the West African Network of
Peasant and Agricultural Producer Organizations (ROPPA)
established in 2000. He has taken part in numerous fora
dealing with African agriculture – including the definition
of the regional agricultural policy of ECOWAS and of the
agricultural component of NEPAD – and in debates in
intergovernmental institutions like FAO, IFAD, European
Union and the WTO.
Nora McKeon studied history at Harvard
University and political science at the Sorbonne before
joining the FAO. She held positions of increasing
responsibility there, culminating in overall direction of
the FAO's relations with civil society. She now divides her
time between consulting, writing and lecturing on food
systems, peasant farmer movements and UN-civil society
relations; and coordinating an exchange and advocacy
program for African and European farmers’ organizations on
agriculture and trade policy issues. Her recent
publications include Peasant Organizations in Theory
and Practice (with Michael Watts and Wendy Wolford,
UNRISD 2004), Strengthening Dialogue with People’s
Movements: UN experience with small farmer platforms and
Indigenous Peoples (with Carol Kalafatic, UN-NGLS
2009) and Civil Society and the United Nations:
Legitimating Global Governance-Whose Voice. (Zed 2009)
Philip McMichael is International
Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University.
Current research is on agrarian movements, land questions
and food regimes. Author of Settlers and the Agrarian
Question (1984), and Development and Social
Change: A Global Perspective (2008), he has also
edited The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food
Systems (1994), Food and Agrarian Systems in the
World Economy (1995), New Directions in the
Sociology of Global Development (2005, with F. H.
Buttel), and Contesting Development: Critical Struggles
for Social Change (2010). He has worked with FAO,
UNRISD, Vía Campesina and the IPC for Food Sovereignty.
Robert Paarlberg is Professor of Political
Science at Wellesley College and Adjunct Professor at the
Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a researcher
and consultant on international food and agricultural
policy. His book, Starved for Science: How
Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa, was
published in 2008 by Harvard University Press. In 2009 he
was the principal writer of a bipartisan report from the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, American Leadership
in the Fight Against Global Hunger and Poverty. His
latest book, Food Politics: What Everybody Needs to
Know, was published in March 2010 by Oxford University
Press. He has served on the board of Winrock International
and has been a consultant to the International Food Policy
Research Institute, the U.S. Agency for International
Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, the World Bank, and the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation.
Peter O’Driscoll became ActionAid USA’s
Executive Director in May 2006. ActionAid is an
international anti-poverty agency working in 50 countries,
taking sides with poor people to end poverty and injustice
together.Prior to joining ActionAid, Peter served at the
Center of Concern from 2000-06 as founder and coordinator
of the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative, a global
network of farm, labor, environment, consumer, faith and
development organizations that work to address market
distortions created by monopoly power in the world food
system. From 1997-2000, Peter was Latin America Director
for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an international
association of social entrepreneurs. He worked in El
Salvador from 1987-1994 with the Jesuit Refugee Service,
first as a volunteer resettlement worker in a refugee camp
and a rural village during that country's civil war, then
as JRS national director. In 2002, Peter was selected by
the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership
Program as one of 24 Fellows from diverse fields to study
innovative solutions to problems with participation and
inclusion in the American democratic process. He has
written on war and reconstruction in El Salvador, on
corporate accountability, and on globalization and
development policy issues. Peter is a graduate of Harvard
College, and earned a masters degree in economic
development from Columbia University's School of
International and Public Affairs.
