Campus is a site for World Food Day 'Tomorrow's Farmers' teleconference

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

To examine the forces working against tomorrow's young farmers in today's changing world and the problems of domestic food security, Cornell will be a viewing site for the 16th annual World Food Day teleconference, "Tomorrow's Farmers: An Uncertain Future."

The program is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 15, from noon to 3 p.m. in the Martha Van Rensselaer Hall Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

As part of the televised event, the World Food Day organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will air the "Community Food Security Summit" from Chicago, premiering a new video and outlining problems and solutions to domestic food security. This broadcast is from 1 to 2 p.m.

The teleconference will examine the challenges, opportunities and prospects facing young, potential farmers in the developing world and how the same issues will affect career and citizenship choices for students in the developed world.

Ray Suarez, host of the National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation," will moderate a panel of experts, including: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, general manager, Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority and a leader of the Committee of 144 Like-Minded Nations; Kevin D. Gallagher, global integrated pest management expert and adviser on participatory development for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization; Rebeca Grynspan, economist and former vice president of Costa Rica; and Rekha Mehra, vice president of the International Center for Research on Women.

The Ithaca location of the teleconference is sponsored by Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences' Community Food Systems Program, the International Agriculture Program of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development.

In addition to the video teleconference, representatives of several projects and programs will be on hand with their displays and posters.

For more information about this World Food Day event or if you would like to set up a display, contact Jennifer Wilkins, senior extension associate, Community Food Systems Program, Division of Nutritional Sciences, at 255-2730, or Jim Haldeman, associate director of the International Agriculture Program, at 255-2283.