Media briefing: Food + Migration: Untold Stories - join us 10/10 in Washington, DC! Free of charge.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following letter is being issued by the International Fund for Agricultural Development:

Dear Journalist,

You are invited to attended an important news-making event, "Food + Migration: Untold Stories" hosted by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on October 10, 2014 from 9-11 a.m.

This event is open to the media only and is free of charge.  Seating is limited.

IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency based in Rome – the UN's food and agriculture hub.

Food + Migration: Untold Stories will be about the stories you'll want to know...and cover: the real causes of rural-to-urban migration in the developing world – causes that often include conflict and violence but are rooted in rural poverty and food insecurity.

Highlights of the event:

• Interview with Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD, conducted by moderator Jane O'Brien, BBC World News America.
• Presentation of findings from commissioned research on media coverage of food + migration, by Sam Dubberley, journalist and Tow Fellow, Columbia University
• Panel discussion with three renowned food policy experts: Eric Holt-Gimenez, Director, Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy; Frederick Kaufman, author of A Short History of the American Stomach and Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being; and Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank

A rare opportunity to hear from these experts.

Register today as seating is limited and spaces are filling up: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/food-migration-untold-stories-tickets-13087006589

BIOGRAPHIES

Danielle Nierenberg is President of Food Tank (www.FoodTank.com) and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world and innovations in sustainable agriculture. Danielle co-founded Food Tank (501c3) in 2013 as an organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Already, the organization boasts more than twenty major institutional partners including Bioneers, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Christensen Fund, IFPRI, IFAD, the Global Forum on Agriculture Research, Oxfam America, Slow Food USA, the UNEP, the UNDP, FAO, and the Sustainable Food Trust. Danielle has also recruited more than 40 of the world's top leaders in food and agriculture policies and advocacy work as part of Food Tank's Advisory Board. The organization will be hosting the 1st Annual Food Tank Summit in January 2015, partnering with The George Washington University.

Eric Holt-Gimenez directs Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, CA. He is the editor of the Food First book Food Movements Unite! Strategies to Transform Our Food Systems; co-author of Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice with Raj Patel and Annie Shattuck; and author of the book Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture and of many academic, magazine and news articles. An agroecologist by training, Eric worked with the Campesino a Campesino Movement in Latin America from 1977 to 1999. He has a M.Sc. in International Agricultural Development from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz. His teaching in development studies includes Boston University, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy.

Frederick Kaufman, is the author of A Short History of the American Stomach and Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being. He has discussed food policy on NBC and MSNBC, Fox Business News, Bloomberg TV, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, and the BBC World Service. A contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, Kaufman's work has also appeared in Scientific American, Nature, Popular Science, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Lapham's Quarterly, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Gentleman's Quarterly, Gourmet, Saveur, Slate, Wired, and numerous other publications. He is Professor of English and Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and featured speaking venues have included the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Public Library, TEDx Manhattan, Yale Sustainable Food, Harvard Law School, the UN Global Policy Forum, and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Jane O'Brien is a regular host of BBC World News America.  She has worked in TV, radio and print journalism for more than 25 years and is based in Washington DC. She has also been a media consultant for UNICEF, writing extensively for the fund's award winning web site, and narrating and producing video segments that highlight the work of UNICEF and other UN agencies. Global affairs remain the focus of her news coverage for the BBC but she also has a strong interest in covering the arts.

Sam Dubberley is an independent news media consultant based in Istanbul, Turkey.  He the co-founder of the eyewitness media group, executive producer of News Xchange and fellow of the Tow Center of Digital Journalism at Columbia University where he undertook research into the impact of eyewitness media on broadcast news output.  He has also worked with UNFPA, Asiavision and Japan's public broadcaster NHK.  He worked for the European Broadcasting Union for nearly a decade for whom he was the head of the Eurovision News Exchange — the world's largest news exchange platform —  between 2010 and 2013. He previously worked as a journalist for Bloomberg Television and holds MAs from Cambridge University and Leicester University and an MBA from Koç University, Istanbul.

Media Contact: Amy Selwyn, [email protected]

SOURCE International Fund for Agricultural Development