Speaker Details

Hans Binswanger is a fellow at the Tswane University for Technology in Tswane, South Africa. He has done research on induced innovation, agricultural mechanization, agricultural investment and supply response, impact of technical change, risk in agriculture, production relations in agriculture, land markets and land reform, and the determinants of agricultural and agrarian policies. In his 25 years at the World Bank, he has been a manager, policy analyst, designer of large scale development programs, implementer, advocate, and AIDS activist. He has been a manager in the World Bank's central Rural Development Department, as well as in Latin America and Africa Region. He has assisted a number of countries in the development of agricultural and rural development strategies and in the design of Community-Driven Development Programs and HIV/AIDS programs (Mexico, Central America, Brazil, Morocco, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and others). He was the architect and writer of the 1997 Rural Development Strategy of the World Bank. Over the eight years he has become an activist inside and outside of the World Bank for the prevention, mitigation, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Will Martin specializes in analysis of trade policy reforms in developing countries, with an emphasis on reforms related to the WTO, and a regional focus on East and South Asia. He has written extensively on policy reforms in agricultural trade and textiles and clothing. He has a particular interest in using detailed data on trade barriers to build up a complete picture of the effects of trade barriers on trade and welfare. He has published widely in journals, and several books, including a recent study of China's accession to the WTO.

Philip Pardey is Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota where he also directs the International Science and Technology Practice and Policy (InSTePP) center. Previously he was a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C. where he led the institute’s Science and Technology Policy Program, and prior to 1994 at the International Service for National Agricultural Research in The Hague, Netherlands. His research deals with the finance and conduct of R&D globally, methods for assessing the economic impacts of research, and the economic and policy (especially intellectual property) aspects of genetic resources and the biosciences. He has (co-)authored more than 170 books, articles, and papers, most recently, Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late? (2006).

Per Pinstrup-Andersen is the H. E. Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy and Professor of Applied Economics at Cornell University; Professor of Development Economics at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (KVL), Copenhagen; and Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He is Chairman of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Science Council and President of the American Agricultural Economics Association. He received the World Food Prize in 2001. He served 10 years as the International Food Policy Research Institute's Director General. His publications include Seeds of Contention published in five languages, and more than 450 other books, refereed journal articles, papers and book chapters.

Tom Reardon is Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University since 1992. In 1999 he was a visiting Fellow at the FAO Regional Office in Chile. Before MSU he was Research Fellow at IFPRI from 1986-1991, a Rockefeller Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow in West Africa from 1984-86. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1984. Tom as a researcher/teacher at the Central Reserve Bank of Peru and the Catholic University of Peru from 1981-1983 as he did his doctoral fieldwork. Tom's research focuses on: (1) the rise of supermarkets in Asia and Latin America, and how this affects food systems and farmers; (2) the rural nonfarm economy in developing regions.

Scott Rozelle is currently a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the University of California, Davis and in July 2006 will be joining the faculty of Stanford University as the Helen’s Farnsworth Professor in the Institute of International Studies. Dr. Rozelle received his B.Sc. from UC, Berkeley, M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Before moving to the University of California in 1998, he was an assistant professor in the Food Research Institute and Department of Economics at Stanford University. Dr. Rozelle's research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with three general themes; a) agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects, b) the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and c) the economics of poverty and inequality. He has published widely on many areas of China’s rural economy. He is fluent in Chinese and has established a research program in which he has close working ties with several Chinese collaborators and policy makers. He is the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy.

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