An Encounter with Roger Thurow, author of 'The Last Hunger Season'

Fellow anti-hunger advocate Elaine VanCleave from Nashville had the good fortune to chat briefly with author Roger Thurow, who recently released his new book The Last Hunger Season.  Mr. Thurow was a featured speaker at The ONE Campaign's national summit in Washington this week.
 
(Incidentally, 150 ONE advocates are on Capitol Hill today to urge Congress to protect lifesaving programs in the FY13 International Affairs budget.  Sound familiar? One of Bread for the World's mini campaigns in the 2012 Offering of Letters asks Congress to protect poverty focused foreign assistance).

The Last Hunger Season tells the story o a group of Kenyan farmers working to transcend lives of dire poverty and hunger illuminates the challenges, and vital necessity, of transforming Africa's agriculture sector
 
Here's a description of the book:

Africa's small farmers, who comprise two-thirds of its population, toil in a time warp, living and working essentially as they did in the 1930s. Without mechanized equipment, fertilizer, or irrigation; using primitive storage facilities, roads, and markets; lacking capital, credit, and insurance; they harvest only one-quarter the yields of Western farmers, half of which spoil before getting to market. But in 2011 one group of farmers in Kenya came together to try to change their odds for success—and their families' futures.

Roger Thurow spent a year following their progress. In The Last Hunger Season, the intimate dramas of the farmers' lives unfold amidst growing awareness that to feed the world's growing population, food production must double by 2050. How will the farmers, Africa, and a hungrier world deal with issues of water usage, land ownership, foreign investment, corruption, GMO's, the changing role of women, and the politics of foreign aid?

Better yet, here is a short video (8 minutes) that goes with the book.