Fall 2003

Jeff Krautkraemer is Professor of Economics at Washington State University. He has a bachelor's degree in Economics from Washington State University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University. He has been at Washington State University since 1981 with one year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Washington and one year as a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington DC. He served four years as graduate program director for the economics department. His research has focused on the optimal use of natural resources and the environment, including the effect of environmental amenities on optimal resource extraction, soil conservation, sustainability, and natural resource scarcity. His work has been published in the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Land Economics, Journal Development Economics, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He currently is working on a book on natural resource economics for Cambridge University Press. He also has become deeply involved with field burning in the Inland Northwest.

Jill Landsberg is a Theme Leader in the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Savannas Management in Australia which is a joint venture of the major organizations involved in research, education, and land management across the savannas of north Australia. It is one of 65 such centers established under the Commonwealth Government's CRC Program. The TS-CRC's research activities are organized around four themes, which together constitute the major elements of sustainable use and conservation of the tropical savannas. The theme Jill leads aims to develop, with industry and community participation, principles and methods for using and monitoring natural resources sustainably. Jill is based in Cairns, Queensland. Jill's work with the TS-CRC is jointly hosted by her employer, the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, and James Cook University, with whom she holds an adjunct appointment as Associate Professor. In addition to leading a portfolio of TS-CRC projects, Jill is currently undertaking research into strategies for conserving threatened flora in the rainforests and savannas of Cape York Peninsula. Her other research interests include nature conservation in arid rangelands, and tree dieback in forests and woodlands. She has published extensively in the scientific literature, and is also active in the Ecological Society of Australia and on a number of government scientific advisory committees.

Pete Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Soils and Global Change in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Interests include carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation, agroecosystem sustainability and vulnerability, and agroecosystem modelling. Pete Smith contributes to numerous national and international projects, frequently contributes as co-ordinating lead author to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, contributes to other international efforts such as Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE), International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), Global Carbon Project (GCP), Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) and is chair of the GCTE Soil Organic Matter Network. He provides advice and research to a number of national governments and the European Union.

Cornelia Flora is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology at Iowa State University and Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. A past president of the Rural Sociological Society, president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, and in-coming president of the Community Development Society, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her Masters degree and PhD are from Cornell University, and her BA is from the University of California at Berkeley. She has authored a number of recent books, including Interactions Between Agroecosystems and Rural Communities (2001) and Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, 2nd Edition (2003) and more than 185 articles, reviews and book chapters on rural development in the United States and developing countries. She is on Boards of Directors the Northwest Area Foundation, the Heartland Institute for Community Leadership, , the Midwest Assistance Program, the Wallace House Foundation, the National Center for Small Communities, and Winrock International. She and her husband, Jan, continue research in the U.S. and the Andean region of Latin America on the theory and practice of community development with a triple bottom line: environment, equity and economic vitality.

Daniel Hillel is professor emeritus of plant, soil and environmental sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A renowned environmental scientist and hydrologist, he has worked throughout the Middle East, as a consultant to the governments of Israel, Pakistan, the Sudan, Iran, Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere; and as an advisor to the World Bank and various U.N. agencies. He has published over 200 scientific papers and reports, as well as popular articles in Natural History Magazine and the National Geographic Society's Research and Exploration. His nineteen books include definitive texts on arid zone ecology, irrigation, and soil physics, as well as the award-winning Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil, Negev: Land, Water and the Life in a Desert Environment, and Rivers of Eden: The Struggle for Water and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East.

Joan Dye Gussow is Mary Swartz Rose Professor emerita and former chair of the Nutrition Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She currently chairs the board of Just Food and is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Chefs' Collaborative. During her career she has served in a number of capacities for various public, private, and governmental organizations, including heading the Boards of the National Gardening Association, the Society for Nutrition Education, and the Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation, serving two terms on
the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences, a term on the FDA's Food Advisory Committee and a term on the National Organic Standards Board. She has also produced several books and a variety of articles on food-related topics. Her books include The Feeding Web, The Nutrition Debate, and Chicken Little, Tomato Sauce and Agriculture. Gussow lives, writes, and tends an organic garden on the west bank of the Hudson River. Her most recent book, based on the lessons she has learned from 40 years of working toward growing her own, is This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader. It was published in June, 2001 by Chelsea Green Publishing Co.

Charles Francis was raised in the high-tech Central Valley, active in FFA and athletics at Modesto High School. At UC Davis he studied Agronomy and continued with student government, football and track, and managed a walnut/almond orchard near Woodland. Graduate school in Plant Breeding at Cornell University included two years at the Univ. of the Philippines College of Agriculture at Los Banos and a year with the national maize program in Colombia. He was maize breeder and later systems agronomist for seven years at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Palmira, Colombia. During his 26 years at University of Nebraska, he has been sorghum breeder, cropping systems agronomist, and rural landscape planner. He has traveled widely in Africa, Latin America, and Europe, consulting or teaching in 30 countries. He has lectured on sustainable agricultural systems in 25 states, and is the author of books, journal articles, book chapters, and Extension publications on cropping systems and sustainable ag. He is Visiting Professor of Agroecology at NOVA University in Sweden, and frequently teaches in their MSc courses. Charles believes in our power to design a positive and equitable future, agreeing with Nobel laureate Rene du Bos that 'Trend is not destiny.'

Fred Kirschenmann was appointed July 2000 as Director of the Leopold Center, following a nationwide search. At the time of his appointment, he managed the 3,500-acre certified organic Kirschenmann Family Farms in south central North Dakota. Fred helped found Farm Verified Organic, Inc., a private certification agency, and the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society, and has served on numerous national/ international appointments, including USDA's National Organic Standards Board, the North Central Region's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) administrative council, Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture board of directors. He earned degrees from Yankton College in South Dakota, Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters dealing with ethics and agriculture.

John Reganold received his M.S. in Soil Science from UC Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Soil Science from UC Davis. He worked with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (then the Soil Conservation Service) as a soil scientist for 4 years and with Utah International Inc. (a worldwide mining company) as an environmental engineer for 2.5 years. He is Professor of Soil Science at Washington State University, where he has been teaching and doing research for 20 years. He teaches classes in introductory soils, soil management, and organic gardening and farming and does research in agroecology, measuring the effects of alternative and conventional farming systems on soil quality, crop yield and quality, financial performance, and environmental impact.

Spring 2003

William B. Lacy is Vice Provost of University Outreach and International Programs, and Professor of Sociology in the Department of Human & Community Development at the University of California, Davis, effective August 1999. Vice Provost Lacy is responsible for leadership of outreach activities and programs, including University Extension, Summer Sessions, UC Davis Connect and campus initiatives involving government, business, and communities in addressing societal needs. He also coordinates campus international initiatives, including Services for International Students and Scholars, international Agreements of Cooperation, and the establishment and operation of the Office of International Programs. Prior to arriving at Davis, Dr. Lacy was the Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension (a New York statewide organization of 1500 employees responsible for utilizing the knowledge of the university to address community issues) and Associate Dean of the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Human Ecology at Cornell University. Dr. Lacy received his B.S. in 1964 from Cornell University, M.A. in Higher Education Administration in 1965 from Colgate University, and his MA and a Ph.D. from University of Michigan in Sociology/Social Psychology in 1971 and 1975, respectively. He has authored/ co-authored over sixty journal articles and book chapters and six books on education, science policy, agricultural research and extension, and biotechnology and biodiversity including: Science, Agriculture and the Politics of Research (1983); Plants, Power and Profits: Social, Economic and Ethical Consequences of the New Biotechnologies (1991); and Making Nature, Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and past president of both the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Rural Sociological Society.

Kenneth G. Cassman presently serves as professor and Head of the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska. He received a BS degree in Biology from the University of California, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Agronomy and Soil Science from the University of Hawaii. He worked as a research agronomist at a 20,000 acre pioneer rice farm on the banks of the Amazon River in Brazil from 1980-1982, and served as legume agronomist on a USAID-funded project in Egypt from 1982-1984. Subsequently, Dr. Cassman was appointed to a faculty position in the Agronomy and Range Science Department at the University of California, Davis in 1984 where he conducted research on soil fertility, plant nutrition, and nutrient cycling in irrigated crop production systems and taught a graduate course on cropping systems analysis. From 1991-1995, he served as Head of the Agronomy, Plant Physiology, and Agroecology Division at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines where he developed collaborative research projects throughout Asia on alleviating biophysical limitations to rice production. He accepted his present position at the University of Nebraska in 1996. Throughout his career, Dr. Cassman's research and extension efforts have focused on achieving both increased productivity and improved environmental quality by conducting fundamental research on applied problems in food production systems. He has worked on most of the world's major cropping systems and has published extensively in the scientific literature. His research on the design and analysis of long-term experiments as a tool for identifying trends in crop yield potential and soil quality is well recognized. A number of his scientific findings have led to the development of new production technologies, which have subsequently been widely adopted by farmers in the USA and elsewhere. These improved practices have resulted in greater profit and productivity while, at the same time, contributing to improvements in soil and water quality. His current work on corn-based systems in Nebraska seeks to understand how crop production systems can provide solutions to many of the most prominent environmental problems that challenge sustainable development at state, national, and global levels.

William H. Friedland is Research Professor and Professor Emeritus of Community Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before he began his academic career, he was an automobile worker in Detroit and also employed by the United Automobile Workers union as an engineer. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State University and the Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at Cornell University for eight years before joining the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he became the founding chair of the Community Studies department. For over three decades he has researched U.S. and California agriculture, publishing on processing tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, the globalization of fresh fruits and vegetables, and is currently working on a book on California grapes - wine, table, and fresh. In 2001 he was awarded the Excellence in Research award of the Rural Sociological Society.

Floor Brouwer is Head of Management of Natural Resources, LEI. He is involved in policy-oriented studies examining interactions between agriculture, nature and the environment. His research interests focus on reforming European agricultural policy towards sustainability. Recently, he coordinated a study to compare environmental and health-related standards influencing the relative competitiveness of EU agriculture vis-à-vis main competitors in the world market. He is senior-researcher with the Mansholt Graduate School in the Netherlands. Before joining LEI in 1989, he was research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, and involved in a study on the future environments in Europe, and the characterization of large-scale transformations with special attention to a few low-probability, high-impact transformations.

Simon Bell is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Complexity and Changeat the Open University in the UK. He has worked on projects in developing countries for the last twenty years and has published five books on various aspects of development, project management and information systems. At present he is actively working on projects in Bangladesh and Lebanon involving Sustainability, information systems and the effective management of projects.

Thomas Lyson is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Rural Sociology at Cornell University and Director of the Community, Food and Agricutlure Program. His research and teaching have focused on understanding how the civic structure of local communities contributes to problem solving. He coined the term 'civic agriculture' to reference the reemergence of local food and agricultural systems throughout the United States. This work is part of a larger effort to examine the linkages among agriculture, food, nutrition, community and health. Perhaps one of the most fundamental question that can be asked in any society is "Does the society have access to an agricultural and food system that leads to healthy outcomes for its citizens?" Lyson's recent books include Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes with R. Olsen and Rural Sociology and Development: Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Communities with H.K. Schwarzweller. His research has been published in Rural Sociology, Social Forces, Social Science Quarterly, Agriculture and Human Values, Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, and Environment and Planning-A. He is a past editor of the journal Rural Sociology and is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. He has been a member of the Northeast SARE Technical Committee. In April, 2000 Lyson was elected Mayor of the Village of Freeville in upstate New York.

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Research Scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she is the leader of the Climate Impacts Group. A recipient of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia University Earth Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Barnard College. Recognizing that the complex interactions of global environmental change and agriculture can best be understood by coordinated teams of experts, Dr. Rosenzweig has organized and led large-scale interdisciplinary, national, and international studies of climate variability and change impacts on future agricultural ecosystems, food trade, and risk of hunger. Researchers from atmospheric science, agronomy, and economics have collaborated in these integrated assessments. A primary goal of Dr. Rosenzweig's research is to involve international scientists from both developed and developing countries; this collaborative team approach allows the participants to contribute and develop detailed knowledge of regional agro-ecosystems and sustainability, so that all share in improving the evaluation of potential global outcomes. She is a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II Third Assessment Report.

Glenn Davis Stone is an ecological anthropologist who has studied indigenous agricultural systems for the past 20 years. He has written extensively on intensification, labor organization, sexual division of labor, ethnicity and production, spatial organization, and especially relationships between population, conflict, and agricultural change. His principal focus has been on sustainable farming systems in Africa, with a secondary focus on the American southwest. He has recently begun research among cotton farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India, where controversial GM crops have recently been introduced. In 2000, he took an NSF-sponsored leave to participate in research on genetic modification of cassava at the Danforth Plant Science Center. For his work he has been awarded an NEH Fellowship, a Weatherhead Fellowship, a Gordon Willey Prize. His doctorate is from Univ. of Arizona and he is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

Additional speaker biographies to be posted.