Ryan Alexander is president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, which says that farm bill proposals so far fall far short of what’s needed to trim budgetary bloat.  

Bill Ayres is executive director of WhyHunger, which works to battle poverty and hunger in the U.S. and abroad. It posts resources on the Food and Farm Bill.

Mark Rasmussen is director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.

Mary Hendrickson is associate director of the Community Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture Program at the University of Missouri.

Mark Bomford is director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. It supervises a sustainable dining program at Yale, manages an organic farm and sponsors programs on food and agriculture.

Ferd Hoefner is policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an alliance of several organizations.

Rob Hedberg is director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service. It promotes farming systems that are “profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities through a nationwide research and education grants program.”

Betty A. DeBerg is a religion professor and head of the department of philosophy and religion at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. She is a co-author of Religion on Campus (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) and is co-director of the National Campus Ministry Project.

Steve Hays is an associate professor in the department of classics and world religions at Ohio University in Athens. With funding from the Ford Foundation, he is helping to develop a Difficult Dialogues Concerning Race and Religion program.