One in nine people in our world go to bed hungry, either too often or all the time—that's some 870 million people. Others who live with food insecurity struggle and worry every day whether or not they will be able to provide meals for themselves and their families. Hunger is worse among women and children, but strikes all ages—from babies whose mothers are too undernourished to produce enough milk to the elderly. Hunger is worse in some countries than others—but is found in every nation. Large clusters of people die at times of famine, but many others go hungry in times of strong harvests or in lean years. According to the UK based World Food Programme, there is enough food in the world today for everyone to have sufficient nourishment. A great deal of it is wasted at every stage of the process, from the farmer’s field to your discarded leftovers.

Frances Moore Lappé and David Rieff will join The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski, Dean of the Cathedral, for a conversation exploring the eradication of hunger.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of eighteen books, including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet, and, most recently, World Hunger: 10 Myths co-authored with Joseph Collins. She is cofounder of three national organizations, including Food First: the Institute for Food and Development Policy (1975) and the Small Planet Institute (2002). Lappé has received eighteen honorary doctorates, as well as the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “Alternative Nobel,” and the James Beard Foundation’s “Humanitarian of the Year” award. Gourmet Magazine chose her among twenty-five people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child) whose work has changed the way America eats. Lappé has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.

David Rieff, a policy analyst, writer and journalist, is the author of The Reproach of Hunger: Food, Justice, and Money in the 21st Century (Simon & Schuster, 2015). He has written widely on topics ranging from war, human rights, and humanitarian assistance in Africa to Third World immigration to the United States to cultural issues. He covered the Bosnian war, spending extended periods of time in Sarajevo during the siege, and the Rwandan genocide. More recently, he has reported from Southwest Asia and Latin America. He is the author of more than ten books, including Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West and Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir.