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Focus The Woods: Global food and land use issues

News | 02.04.2011

Join us Tuesday, February 8 and Wednesday, February 9, 2011 for Focus The Woods: Global Food and Land Use Issues.

“One billion people are hungry today.” This statement by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations challenges us to care about hunger around the world. 

Hunger and possible solutions to feeding the hungry will be addressed at the Focus the Woods: Global Food and Land Use Issues on February 9, 2011 at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College.  The College takes an interdisciplinary look at national and global information related to food and land uses that face our world. Focus the Woods, an annual symposium, tackles topics affecting our global society including climate change, sustainability and water accessibility. 

Focus the Woods: Global Food and Land Use Issues kicks off with the viewing of the film The Global Banquet on February 8, 2011, which demonstrates how food security is linked to social development and how women, in particular, are affected by it. This film reveals how agribusiness squeezes out small farmers and how trade liberalization undercuts subsistence farming—in the U.S. as well as in developing countries.

 Presentation topics by Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College faculty and students include access to land, forests, water, grazing or fishing grounds; poverty; agricultural support; and social responsibility. The keynote global food and land use issues will be delivered by SMWC Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Kennedy Ondimu, Ph.D., dean and associate professor in the department of geography from Egerton University in Kenya, Africa.

All events, except for the luncheon, take place in Hayes Auditorium, located in Hulman Hall.

Event Agenda
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
7 p.m. Showing of Film, “The Global Banquet” (1 hour)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
9:10 a.m. Welcome by Interim President Dottie L. King, Ph.D.
9:15 a.m. – 10 a.m.

Faculty panel “Global Food and Land Use Issues – Interdisciplinary Perspectives”

  • Dr. Patricia McIntyre, Assistant Professor of Theology, Moderator
  • Dr. Chris Hudson, Associate Professor of English
  • Dr. Eliezer Bermudez, Associate Professor of Environmental Health Science, Indiana State University
  • Dr. Mary Lou Dolan, CSJ, Director, Master of Arts in Earth Literacy 
10:15 a.m. – 11 a.m. “Land Use Issues in Kenya/Africa” – D. Kennedy N. Ondimu, Visiting Fulbright Scholar
11:15 a.m. – noon Virtual Scholar Presentation, “Intersections of Literacy and Environmental Crisis”
Dr. Jennifer Wenzel, Associate Professor of Comparative English, University of Michigan 
Noon Community Day Luncheon
1 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

SMWC student panel, “Social Justice and Land Use Policies,” presented by students in TH 343 Global Issues of Justice & Peace

Moderator: Danielle Sommers

Panelists: Shelby Becker, Leiona Noah, Allison True, Joanna Winnicki

2 p.m. Case Study Discussion, Dr. Janet Clark, Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, Moderator
3 p.m. – 4 p.m. Poster Show (Outside Hayes Auditorium)