Hunger in the News: Poverty Tour, "The Last Hunger Season"

A regular, non-comprehensive roundup of current news links on hunger and poverty issues from around the Web:

• "The Root of Drought Happiness": Gates Foundation intern Peter Kithene writes a personal piece about the importance of the cassava crop in sub-Saharan Africa.  
• "The achievement gap, by the numbers": Using U.S. Education statistics, the Washington Post examines the public school achievement gap (with accompanying "Public School Students and Poverty" infographic).  
• "The Election-Season Poverty Tour": Scholar Cornel West and broadcaster Tavis Smiley announce 'The Poverty Tour 2.0: A Call to Conscience," a series of town-hall meetings "to make the eradication of poverty a top priority in America." The tour, timed to coincide with the release of U.S. Census Bureau poverty figures, kicks off tomorrow.
• Review: "The Last Hunger Season": Paul Collier, writing in the Washington Post , says Roger Thurow's story of drought from the perspective of a smallholder farmer in western Kenya "aptly conveys the risky choices that farmers are required to make in highly constrained situations."
• "A million-dollar rain ': Drought-hit Minn. farmer feels ups, downs of passing storm": An NBC news team spends a day with Minnesota farmer Dean Tofteland and documents "the raw realities of farming and the weather, both drought and rain."