Thom Jayne, Professor of International Development from Michigan State University will answer the following questions: What are the trends in land access? How can smallholder farmers get higher value out of scarce land and how does that relate to food and non-food markets? Smallholder vs. large enterprises in Africa. Derek Byerlee, independent scholar and director of the 2009 World Development Report will provide additional commentary.

Thomas Jayne's professional career has been devoted to promoting effective policy responses to poverty and hunger in Africa. Jayne is Professor, International Development, in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics and a member of the Core Faculty of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. He is involved in research, outreach, and capacity building programs in collaboration with African universities and government agencies, mainly focusing on food marketing and trade policies and their effects on sustainable and equitable development. Jayne's secondary research focus has been on measuring the current and long-term effects of HIV/AIDS on African agriculture. Jayne sits on the editorial boards of two development journals, received a top paper award in 2004 by the International Association of Agricultural Economists, co-authored a paper (with graduate student Jacob Ricker-Gilbert) awarded the T.W. Schultz Award at the 2009 International Association of Agricultural Economists Triennial Meetings, and received the 2009 Best Article Award in Agricultural Economics (with co-authors Xhying Xu, William Burke, and Jones Govereh). Jayne's work has also been recognized at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome and the Secretariat of Global Agricultural Science Policy for the Twenty-First Century.