UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Per Pinstrup-Andersen, H. E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University and World Food Prize Laureate, will deliver the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences’ M.E. John Lecture at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28. The event will take place in 112 Forest Resources Building on the University Park campus, and will be preceded by a reception at 3:30 p.m. in the Atrium of the Forest Resources Building.

In addition to the Babcock professorship, Pinstrup-Andersen is the J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University, and professor of development economics at the University of Copenhagen. He is past chair of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and past president of the American Agricultural Economics Association.

He is the recipient of the 2001 World Food Prize and has served as director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute and as an economist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia. His publications include “Seeds of Contention,” published in five languages, and more than 500 other books, refereed journal articles, papers and book chapters.

His lecture, “Ethics, Hunger and Globalization,” will argue that institutional innovation in the international arena and new public policy initiatives at the national level are needed to guide future globalization efforts towards a more equitable benefit distribution. In particular, new institutions and policies are needed to channel a greater share of the globalization benefits towards population groups suffering from poverty, hunger and malnutrition either directly through incentives and regulations to alter behavior or through compensatory measures.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology in recognition of M.E. John, who served as department head from 1946 to 1969.

###

EDITORS: Contact Spiro Stefanou at 814-863-8635, or by e-mail at SpiroS@psu.edu for more information.

Writer-Editor: Gary Abdullah 814-863-2708 gxa2@psu.edu