This panel will address some of the causes of global hunger from economic, sociological and agricultural perspectives.

Nola Reinhardt will frame the issue of hunger in terms of the current short-term crisis and longer-term trends, addressing some of what drives the dramatic increase in global hunger and analyzing some of the events that lead to it. She will discuss the results of limited access to resources that people living in poverty face and the causes, and effects, of “landlessness.”

Paul Wetzel will give an overview of agricultural practices, addressing some of the challenges brought on by soil loss, greater use of fertilizers, irrigation and cost of pumping water in areas of lowered water tables, and the effects of mechanized harvesting and transportation.

Payal Banerjee will talk about privatization and displacement and the impacts on people living in poverty.

This panel will offer ideas and contributions about the varieties of (and prospects for) responses to humanitarian and food crises.

Mlada Bukovansky will provide a treatment of the political economy of humanitarian crises, focusing on the economic and bureaucratic factors shaping the humanitarian response to famine.

Nola Reinhardt will assess the market dimensions of strengthening local farming systems as the principal response to the persistent, long-term problem of world hunger, emphasizing the need to support smallholding farmers with appropriate institutional, infrastructural, and technological support - with the focus in the latter being agroecological approaches as opposed to "Green Revolution" technology.

Beth Hooker will focus on a variety of agricultural practices, such as returning biomass to the soil and promoting sustainability through increasing organic matter, soil biodiversity, soil aggregation, and water holding capacity. Part of our response to world hunger should include the appropriate use of ecological agricultural practices such as these and others to foster agroecosystem resilience, a critical factor in ameliorating the effects of climate change.

Nancy Delaney will discuss several of the innovative programs that Oxfam has invested in with global partner organizations to address hunger. These will include the System of Rice Intensification, weather insurance and grain banks.