(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) — “Corporations & the Food Movement,” a conversation with author Michael Pollan and representatives from Walmart, is next in Edible Education: The Rise And Future Of The Food Movement, a series of videotaped lectures from UC Berkeley with renowned author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Nikki Henderson of the People’s Grocery, on Wednesday, November 2, 2011, at 7 p.m., at the Lecture Center at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington. The program, the fifth in a nine-week series on the rise and future of the food movement, is presented by Berkshire Grown.

Joining Pollan in the conversation is Jack Sinclair, executive vice president of grocery merchandise at Wal-Mart, and Jib Ellison, CEO of Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting.

Jack Sinclair is the executive vice president of the food division for Walmart U.S., responsible for the company’s overall strategy for food and grocery. He works to integrate planning, category management, store experience and private brand development into the grocery business unit. Sinclair joined Walmart from McCurrach, a U.K.-based field merchandising business. He has worked in the retail food business since 1982 when he began his career as a trainee at Shoppers’ Paradise in the United Kingdom. He worked for Tesco and Safeway PLC, where he eventually served on the board of directors that led the merger of Safeway PLC and Morrisons.

Jib Ellison is the founder and CEO of Blu Skye Strategy Consulting where he leads a small team of strategy experts who work with Fortune 50 companies to transform markets and to create new ones. His process is premised upon using sustainability to reveal new market opportunities, engage senior management and employees, and leverage his considerable network of experts to do well by doing good. In this way, Ellison and his team expand conventional definitions of value, opportunity and change. His recent clients include Hilton, Microsoft, SC Johnson, Sony Pictures, Staples, Walmart, and Waste Management.

Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, A Place of My Own, and Second Nature. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. Pollan served for many years as executive editor of Harper’s Magazine and is now the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Edible Education: The Rise And Future Of The Food Movement is a series of nine videotaped lectures from UC Berkeley, part of a course coordinated by author Michael Pollan and Nikki Henderson of the People’s Grocery. Speakers include authors Marion Nestle, Politics of Food; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation; and activist and innovative chef Alice Waters. For a list of speakers and topics, visit Berkshire Grown.

The public is invited to sit in on one session or attend the series. Each week, guest speakers will draw on everything from economics and agronomy to sociology, anthropology, and the arts to address different aspects of the food movement including farm bill reform, organic agriculture, school lunch reform, food safety, animal welfare, local food economies and more.

All lectures will be screened at the Lecture Center at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, 84 Alford Rd., Great Barrington, Mass., on Wednesdays at 7 pm.

This free series is generously sponsored by Iredale Mineral Cosmetics and co-hosted by Berkshire Grown and Bard College at Simon’s Rock. The Chez Panisse Foundation helped facilitate. For more information, please visit Edible Education: The Rise And Future Of The Food Movement.