”The quality of speakers was exceptional” … a Bring Food Home 2010 participant
Photo by Laura Berman /
We were happy to have the following keynote speakers at the 2011 Bring Food Home:
The Bring Food Home conference featured two exciting keynote events:
“Let’s Talk About Food”
A keynote panel event, featuring Mark Winne (U.S.), Jeanette Longfield (U.K.) and Dawn Morrison (B.C.), in a discussion moderated by Jon Steinman (B.C.).
The Bring Food Home 2011 Keynote Presentation
Raj Patel spoke to conference attendees during lunch at Trent University’s Great Hall (an event exclusively for conference participants).
Our Keynote Speakers
Raj Patel
Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He has degrees from the 
University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He’s currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. He is currently an IATP Food and Community Fellow. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller. (Back to top)
Mark Winne
From 1979 to 2003, Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food 
System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. He is a co-founder of a number of food and agriculture policy groups including the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition. He was an organizer and chairman of the Working Lands Alliance, a statewide coalition working to preserve Connecticut’s farmland, and is a founder of the Connecticut Farmland Trust. Mark was a member of the United States delegation to the 2000 World Conference on Food Security in Rome and is a 2001 recipient of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s Plow Honor Award. From 2002 until 2004, Mark was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a position supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He will hold a Visiting Scholar position at John Hopkins University School of Public Health for the 2010/11 academic year.
Mark currently writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community food assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication and food policy council work for the Community Food Security Coalition. Mark is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008) and Food Rebels, Guerilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture (Beacon Press, 2010).
Mark now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he serves on the Santa Fe Food Policy Council and the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bates College and a master’s degree from Southern New Hampshire University. (Back to top)
Jeanette Longfield
Jeanette Longfield is the Coordinator of Sustain UK, an organisation that advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, enrich society and culture and promote equity. Her degree in International 
Relations and a Masters in Development Studies led to work as a Policy Analyst at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. After five years she moved onto campaigning at the Coronary Prevention Group. Four years on she became Co-ordinator of the National Food Alliance, alongside undertaking consultancy work for other health-related organisations. As Sustain’s Co-ordinator, Jeanette liaises with Britain’s Food Standards Agency, contributes to a number of food policy committees, and appears regularly in the media representing a public interest view on food policy issues. She was awarded an MBE for services to food policy in the 2007 New Year Honours. (Back to top)
Dawn Morrison
Dawn Morrison is the Founder, Chair and Coordinator of the B.C. Food Systems
Networking Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty. In the years away from her ancestral Secwepemc (Shuswap) community, Dawn’s work in various capacities throughout her 20 year long career in Horticulture has literally kept her in touch with her Indigenous roots through applying an ecological approach to studying and working with plants. Her Secwepemc heritage along with her technical and practical background in horticulture and ethonobotany, as well as her passion for environmental and cultural revitalization lead her to a long lasting career in Aboriginal adult education and community self-development.
Dawn returned home in 2000 to re-connect with her ancestral ties in Secwepemc territory and has since committed to learning and working with Elders and traditional hunters, fishers and harvesters to improve the health and well being of the Secwepemc peoples, the land they have traditionally lived on and their language and way of life. As a Community Self-Development Facilitator Dawn works from a basis of Indigenous food sovereignty and eco-cultural restoration and has an educational background in the areas of horticulture, adult instruction, restoration of natural systems, and business management. (Back to top)
Jon Steinman
Between 2006 and 2010, Jon Steinman was the host and producer of Deconstructing Dinner, a Kootenay Co-op Radio show that
was created to dispense and discuss current food issues. Jon studied food systems at the University of Guelph, leading him to work within restaurants that were fostering more personal relationships with their suppliers (farmers)! These experiences played an important role in Jon’s eventual interest to ‘deconstruct’ where our food comes from and advocate for more resilient regional food systems.
Jon has been involved in and coordinated many food initiatives including G.E. Free Kootenays,Community Food Matters, and theKootenay Grain CSA. He’s a Board Director of the Kootenay Country Store Co-operative - Canada’s largest independent consumer food co-op. Jon is currently the Coordinator for a short-term project which intends to build capacity in the West Kootenay region of B.C. to develop a regional food council. Jon is an established writer, having been published in Orion Magazine, Briarpatch Magazine, Small Farm Canada, and Synergy Magazine among others. (Back to top)
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