Stuffed and Starved / Food Sovereignty / The Canadian Wheat Board

Deconstructing Dinner features three segments produced by the National Radio Project's Making Contact and Vancouver Co-op Radio's (CFRO) Redeye.

The segments include a lecture of Raj Patel - author of Stuffed and Starved, an interview with the University of Regina's Annette Desmarais on the topic of food sovereignty and an interview with freelance journalist Frances Russell on the current state of The Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian government's efforts to strip the Board of its single-desk marketing of western Canadian wheat.

Voices

Raj Patel, author, Stuffed & Starved (Berekley, CA) - Raj Patel has worked for the World Bank, interned at the WTO, consulted for the UN and been involved in international campaigns against his former employers. Currently a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, his education includes degrees from Oxford, the London School of Economics & Cornell University. He's also a researcher with the Land Research Action Network. His thoughts on food, hunger, and globalization have appeared in a number of US and international news sources, including the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.

Annette Desmarais, professor, justice studies, University of Regina (Regina, SK) - Justice Studies Prof Annette Desmarais's area of research includes food sovereignty, or, the right of peoples to define their own food systems and not have them be determined from the outside, by the forces of global capitalism. Her related research interests include globalization and agrarian change. She is currently involved in an ongoing research project with the Via Campesina, an international peasant and farm movement, to develop an international research framework for all future study of the group. She is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Peasant Studies, as well as the Canadian Association of Food Studies, and has published the book La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants, which has been translated into French and Spanish.

Frances Russell, freelance journalist (Winnipeg, MB) - Frances Russell is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist and author. She is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press and is the author of two books. Her career as a journalist and columnist spans nearly 40 years. From 1981 to 1999, she wrote a tri-weekly column on national and provincial politics for the Winnipeg Free Press. Prior to this, she worked as a reporter and political columnist with The Winnipeg Tribune, The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail and United Press International in Ottawa. During this time she also provided occasional columns and commentary for CBC-TV, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld, The Ottawa Journal, The Edmonton Journal, The Toronto Star, Canadian Forum Magazine and Time Canada Magazine.