The 2009 panel will include four speakers:

• Eric Holt-Gimenez--Executive Director of FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy, author of "Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice and Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture," and former Latin America Program Manager at the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C.;
   
• Jeffrey W. Moyer--Farm Director of the Rodale Institute, Chair of United States Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board, project leader of Biological No-Till Project, and member of Leonardo Academy’s Committee for Sustainable Agriculture;
   
• Tom Philpott--Co-Founder and Co-Director of Maverick Farms--a sustainable agriculture non-profit and small farm located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, freelance journalist, food editor for "Grist," and author of "Victual Reality"--the nation’s only weekly column on food politics; and
   
• Kai Robertson--Director of Agriculture and Market Transformation for the World Wildlife Fund, member of the Board of Protected Harvest, former Director of Food and Agriculture at Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, and former employee of the Environmental Working Group and the Food Marketing Institute.

Each speaker will have 15 minutes to present information during the panel discussions. A moderated question-and-answer session with the audience will follow.

The speakers will be on campus on October 15-16. In addition to the public presentation, they will meet with students and faculty from the Environmental Sciences program and related academic disciplines in classrooms and informal settings on campus. The speakers will also tour nearby sites from Cooperstown to the Catskills to see local food-related resources.

The Cornell-Gladstone-Hanlon-Kaufmann Annual Lectureship on Environmental Education and Communication was established by Virginia and William Kaufmann through a gift to the College at Oneonta Foundation in 1999. The lecture series is named in honor of several families from the Oneonta and Stamford areas who exemplified an enduring love and appreciation for the natural resources of the Catskill region. Virginia Kaufmann was a 1944 graduate of the College at Oneonta.