Haroon Akram-Lodhi teaches agrarian political economy. He is Professor of International Development Studies and Chair of the Department of International Development Studies at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. He is also an Associated Research Professor of the Academic Unit in Development Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico, Adjunct Professor of Economics in the Master's in Development Practice program at the James T.

Associate Professor in Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS).

Raj Patel is no stranger to Food First. He was a Policy Analyst with the Institute from 2002 to 2004. Raj is the author of two wildly popular books on our food and economic systems, Stuffed and Starved, and the recent The Value of Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy. He regularly blogs at rajpatel.org.

Raj studied sociology, philosophy, politics and economics at Cornell University, the London School of Economics and Oxford University. After leaving Food First, Raj was a fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban, South Africa, and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley in the Center for African Studies. He is the co-editor of "Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform," published by Food First and the Land Research Action Network.