Ronda Rutledge is executive director of the Sustainable Food Center in Austin, Texas. She has supported reforming the commodity program and improving rural development and nutrition programs.

Kenneth Dierschke is president of the Texas Farm Bureau. See his April 5, 2012, post, “What is it about the Farm Bill that is so difficult?”

Sterling Brown is the Utah Farm Bureau Federation’s vice president for public policy.

Erik Whittington is the campus outreach coordinator for Students for Life and co-founded Rock for Life, a music-based project of American Life League that is directed at young people.

Arlin S. Wasserman is founder of the St. Paul-based consulting firm Changing Tastes, which counsels philanthropic organizations and food companies on agriculture and food trends.

Mark Muller is director of the Food and Justice Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, which posts resources on the farm bill. See also a Nov. 7, 2011, column that Muller wrote about the bill.

Charles W. Fluharty, a graduate of Yale Divinity School, is president emeritus and director of policy programs at the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Barbara J. Dilly is associate professor of anthropology at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. Her research interests include the rural church and American agriculture.

The Churches’ Center for Land and People, based in Middleton, Wis., is is an ecumenical organization working to strengthen rural life and the ministries of faith communities in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. It is sponsored by a number of Christian denominations, religious orders and other organizations.