Prof. Joachim von Braun Joachim von Braun is Director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF), Bonn University, and Professor for economic and technological change.  von Braun’s main research interests are in sustainable economic development, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, resource economics, trade, science and technology policy. He is chair of the Bioeconomy Council of the Federal German Government; Vice-President of the NGO “Welthungerhilfe”, Vice Chair of the Board of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), member of two German Academies, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Vatican; fellow of African Academy of Science. He was Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in Washington, DC, U.S.A. from 2002 to 2009, and President of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). Dr. Alisher Mirzabaev Dr. Alisher Mirzabaev is a senior researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. His current research areas include economics of land degradation, bioenergy and the wate r-energy-food security nexus. Before joining ZEF in 2009, he was an economist with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). He holds a PhD Degree from the University of Bonn in Germany for his thesis on the economics of climate change in Central Asia.   Dr. Ephraim M. Nkonya Dr. Ephraim Nkonya is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. Ephraim leads an IFPRI program on land resources for poverty reduction. He earned his masters and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from Kansas State university from 1992 – 1999. He has published widely in referred journals, books and book chapters on issues related to natural resource management, poverty reduction, climate change and role of rural services on poverty reduction. He is a member of the editorial board of the African Journal of Agricultural and Resourc e Economics. He also serves as a reviewer to a large number of referred journals.