By Jennifer Thompson

In the next two weeks the University of Central Arkansas’s Honors College will be sponsoring “Just Food: Farm-to-Fork Food Systems for 21^st Century Communities,” a part of the college’s 2009 Challenge Week.

It kicks off with a screening of Robert Kenner’s documentary Food, Inc. at Market Street Cinema in Little Rock on Monday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m.  For non-UCA students, the cost is $5.  On Thursday, Nov. 5, the director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Clinton administration will speak at the Clinton School of Public Service at 7 p.m.  He is currently the director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, and hunger will be the topic of his speech.

The only other event that will take place in Little Rock will be a talk by Joel Salatin, author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front, on the final night of Challenge Week. Salatin will speak at the Statehouse Convention Center on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. about sustainable farming and the federal government’s current food policy.

If students are willing to make the short drive to UCA’s campus in Conway, they could hear from Chris Taylor, the creator of the documentary Food Fight; Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered; and Marion Nestle, the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.

Dates, times and specific locations are available at http://honors.uca.edu/ChallengeWeek/