2003 Pesek Colloquium - Food, Farming, Fear: The Power of Ideas to Create the World We Want

Frances Moore Lappe, author of Scarcity Myths: The Power of Ideas to Shape the World We Want, is the co-founder of two national organizations focused on food and the roots of democracy. In 1975, she founded the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (now known more commonly as Food First). This action-based non-profit organization organizes and puts forth information on the causes of and solutions for world hunger. In 1990, Lappe co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a ten-year initiative that inspires and prepares people to make democracy a rewarding, practical, everyday approach to solving society's problems. Her first book, Diet for a Small Planet, was released in 1971 and was instrumental in helping a generation rethink issues on food and hunger. Some of Lappe's other books include Mozambique and Tanzania: Asking the Big Questions (1979), Aid as Obstacle: 20 Questions About Our Foreign Aid and the Hungry (1980), World Hunger: Twelve Myths (1986), Rediscovering America's Values (1989), and The Quickening of America: Rebuilding Our Nation (1994). Her most recent work, Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (2002) is a narrative of small-scale democratic movements worldwide where people are working to solve problems of hunger and lack of economic opportunity.