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.

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.

Daryll E. Ray is a professor and holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He directs the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center. See a column on the 2012 farm bill that he wrote with Harwood Schaffer, research assistant professor for the center.

The Rev. L. LaSimba M. Gray Jr., pastor of New Sardis Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., lobbied Congress on behalf of Bread for the World for reforms in the 2007 farm bill.

Daniel Vestal was the executive coordinator of the Atlanta-headquartered Cooperative Baptist Fellowship until 2012. He lobbied Congress about the 2007 farm bill for reforms aimed at helping rural areas and poor farmers.