With Ending Hunger in our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization (IFPRI/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), the authors C. Ford Runge, Benjamin Senauer, Philip Pardey, and Mark Rosegrant set out to write a book that clearly communicates complex ideas about hunger and how best to end it. Based on the marshalling of extensive research, the book was written in a rigorous but nonacademic style with the explicit intent of making food security problems and solutions understandable to non-experts interested in the subject.

Recognizing that the authors had succeeded in their objective, the American Agricultural Economics Association (AAEA) recently awarded the book its Quality of Communications Award. In presenting the award, Katherine R. Smith, Chair of the 2003/2004 AAEA Awards Committee, noted: “This exceptionally accessible, convincing, and compelling book makes the case that through well directed scientific R&D and sustainable technology transfer, global investment, and the institutional change and renewal that must complement and can accelerate scientific and economic progress, global food security can be accomplished.”

Because the book covers a wide range of issues--environment, technology, education, and policy and institutional reforms--it is also proving valuable as a textbook for college courses.