Monday, September 22nd
8:00 am	Registration opens/Continental Breakfast available
9:00 am	Welcome
9:30 am	Keynote Address
10:30 am	Break
10:45 am	Workshop Session I • From Oil Age to Soil Age • Role of Government Policy in Industrialization of Livestock Production • Politics of Campus Dining • The Farm Bill Uncovered • Worker Justice as an Element of Sustainable Food
12:15 pm	Lunch
2:30 pm	Plenary Session: The Business of Sustainability
4:30 pm	Networking Opportunity
5:30 pm	Reception Hosted by Park Scholarships
6:30 pm	Dinner with Keynote Speaker - Sowing the Seeds of Hope Against Hunger: The U.S. Perspective

Tuesday, September 23rd
7:30 am	Registration opens/Continental Breakfast
8:30 am	Workshop Session II • Slow Money: Financing Sustainable Food Systems • Impact of Organic Agriculture • Achieving Agricultural Justice and Domestic Fair Trade • Global Perspective on Agricultural Policy: Focus on the Food Crisis • More Than the Corner Store
10:00 am	Break
10:15 am	Buses Depart for Field Trips
12:45 am	Buses Depart to Return to NC State
2:00 pm	Plenary Session: Debating the Politics of Food
4:00 pm	Networking Opportunity
6:00 pm	Dinner w/keynote speaker - Sowing the Seeds of Hope Against Hunger: The Global Perspective

Wednesday, September 24th
7:30 am	Continental Breakfast
8:30 am	Workshop Session III • Growing Healthy Food Without Frying the Planet • From Pilot to Policy: Promoting a Sustainable Food System • Food and Health Care System • Kitchen Table Revolutionaries: How Food Activists are Changing the American Food System • Roadblocks Ahead: How Disaster Assistance Programs Prevent the Growth of Sustainable Markets
10:00 am	Coffee Break
10:30 am	Plenary Session: Equity and Justice in the American Food System
12:30 pm	Lunch/Networking Break
2:00 pm	Plenary Session: Do we need Genetically Modified Organisms?: A Conversation with Vandana Shiva and Gary Comstock
4:30 pm	Closing and Evaluation

Full Abstract:

How can we promote a food system that is environmentally sustainable, socially just, and economically viable? Growing worldwide populations and anticipated new stresses connected to climate change will place new pressures on our food system. At the same time, the food system already falls short in sustaining the well-being of rural communities, even while consumers experience skyrocketing obesity and related health problems. Food production and distribution systems frequently exacerbate social inequality, rather than fulfilling food's traditional role of bringing communities together.

The Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) invites you to a national conference on how America grows, distributes, buys and eats its food. Entitled "The Politics of Food," the agenda for this September 22-23, 2008 conference will focus on food security, sustainability and systems.

Drawing on diverse perspectives from farmers, workers, businesses, academics, social activists, government regulators and artists, the conference will engage participants in a challenging exploration of how and why our food system works as it does, whether it is secure, just and sustainable, and how it might be reshaped for the future.

Conference themes will include:
* agriculture's role in supporting vibrant communities and healthy ecosystems;

* questions of equity and justice in the food system, including U.S. agricultural subsidy programs, farm and factory labor practices, access to healthy food, and industrial pollution and public health risks;

* the implications of climate change and rising energy demands for agricultural production; and,

* tensions among, and prospects for, organic agriculture, genetically engineered crops, and local versus international agriculture and centralized versus decentralized systems.

The conference will provide an interactive forum that enables attendees to make new connections and share information around the common goal of developing visionary, yet practical, solutions to local and national food-related challenges. The conference will help participants to identify opportunities for public leadership in their communities and institutions, ways that they can help shape the nation's food systems.

North Carolina State University Park Scholarships and Department of Food Science will co-host the "Politics of Food" conference. North Carolina's rich and diverse agricultural heritage has put it at the crux of the challenges facing modern agriculture, and this setting provides a terrific opportunity to explore strategies that North Carolina communities and businesses are using to build a more sustainable food system from the ground up.