April 26, 2011

McWilliams will critically examine some of our assumptions about sustainable agriculture and suggest a general outline for how we can feed 9 billion people a sustainable diet—with minimal agricultural expansion—by 2050.

McWilliams, the author of four books on food and agriculture, is a professor of environmental and agricultural history at Texas State University, San Marcos. His most recent book is Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly(2009). His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and on Slate.com. In 2001 he won the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History awarded by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and in 2009 he won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

McWilliams currently blogs at The Atlantic and at Freakonomics.com. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he frequents the local farmers’ market. This was the 2010-11 Kritikos Lecture.

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