Food First Speakers

Food, fuel and finance are all issues of great urgency right now. A variety of factors including the use of food for fuel, and speculation in commodities drove up the price of both food and fuel in the spring and summer of 2008. This was followed by the global financial collapse. Today over one billion (one in six people in the world) are not able to buy or grow sufficient food to meet their daily caloric needs.

Food First's speakers can inform audiences about the longer-term underlying causes of these intertwined crises and speak about hopeful movements and actions happening in communities around the world. This crisis may be out of the headlines, but for the one in six who aren't eating enough, life is still tenuous.

Speakers include:

Eric Holt-Giménez, executive director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy and author of Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2387 and to view him reading from the book go to http://vimeo.com/4601504
He is also the author of Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture http://www.foodfirst.org/en/store/book/Campesino_a_Campesino

Raj Patel is a Food First Fellow and former policy analyst. He is co-author of Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice and author of Stuffed and Starved
http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/frontpage

Annie Shattuck is a policy analyst at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. She is a co-author of Food Rebellions!. Annie has written and spoken extensively on the global food crisis, agrofuels, climate change and food sovereignty. You can read more about Annie here: http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2369

To plan a speaking engagement with one of these speakers, please contact Martha Katigbak-Fernandez at 510-654-4400 ext 221.

Here are some things to think about before contacting Martha.
1. What topic do you want a speaker to focus on? And how long is the speech to be? Is there question and answer time?
2. Who is the audience and how many people?
3. Do you have access funding to cover travel and possibly an honorarium, or do you have a plan to raise money to cover costs?
4. Can you partner with other organizations to increase the attendance at this event?
5. Can you arrange for a radio, newspaper, or internet interview, and/or audio or video taping of part or all of the speech for upload to an internet site?
6. Are you seeking a keynote speaker or a panelist or both?
7. Can you arrange for a table to sell Food First books and materials?

Call Martha Katigbak-Fernandez at 510-654-4400 ext 221 to see if Food First has a speaker available for the date you have in mind.