S5 Ep5: The Food System is Not the Problem— It’s the Solution with Danielle Nierenberg
“We have an opportunity because of the urgency now to come together. Sometimes, we forget but there’s joy in food. We can figure this thing out, but we need to get it together.” — Danielle Nierenberg
In a world where the climate is changing and the population is growing at an alarming rate, it is more important than ever to build a more resilient food system that can not only withstand shocks and stresses but also thrives in the face of these changes.
When it comes to developing a more resilient food system, it pays to work together. By pooling our resources and knowledge, we can create a system that is better able to combat climate change and other global issues we face today. Ultimately, by working together, we can build a food system that is more robust and resilient.
Co-founded by Danielle Nierenberg, Food Tank is dedicated to building a community toward a more resilient food system. Food Tank is a non-profit organization that works to advance the conversation around food and agriculture by promoting sustainable agricultural solutions and providing training programs to help local communities face the challenges unique to them.
Tune in as Justine and Danielle discuss the need for collaboration in building a more sustainable food system. They also discuss how we can reframe the story we tell about food and agriculture, how food brings joy, and why farmers hold the key to solving some of the global issues we face today.
Connect with Danielle:
Danielle Nierenberg is a world-renowned researcher, speaker, and advocate, on all issues relating to our food system and agriculture.
In 2013, she co-founded Food Tank with Bernard Pollack, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Food Tank is a global convener, thought leadership organization, and unbiased creator of original research impacting the food system. Danielle is the recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award.
Episode Highlights:
01:18 A Focus on Agricultural Problems
06:54 People Thriving in the Food Movement Inspire
12:51 The Origin - Food Tank
16:25 Food is Part of the Solution
21:01 Solving Problems at Different Levels
23:07 Be a Chief Sustainability Officer
Resources:
Books
News and Articles
Tweets:
There’s no denying— We live in a period where it's more urgent than ever to develop a more resilient food system. The only way to do this is to work together to create solutions that benefit everyone. Join @jreichman and @foodtank President Danielle Nierenberg as they share how we can start to implement solutions to the food system's biggest challenges. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #foodtank #organicfarm #hunger #malnutrition #farmers #food #foodmovement #resiliency
Inspirational Quotes:
02:51 ”I wanted to shift the paradigm where we talk about what’s hopeful and what the solutions are. And then, talk about the problems because that grabs people more.” -Danielle Nierenberg
03:43 “Cheap food isn’t really cheap.” -Danielle Nierenberg
06:08 “It was an accident turned into something more, and was very mission-driven.” -Justine Reichman
08:00 “It was important for us as part of the food movement to thrive off seeing other people.” -Danielle Nierenberg
09:27 “It is scary to get back out there in this time… And it’s hard to do when we’re not collaborating together.” -Justine Reichman
14:30 “There’s so much we can learn from farmers in other parts of the world. But it was one of those moments that you’re just, ‘Ah! This is what it’s all about’.” -Danielle Nierenberg
17:06 “Food and agriculture can be part of the solution if we get it right. The urgency of getting it right is greater than ever before.” -Danielle Nierenberg
19:01 “Everything that I do is everything that I love.” -Justine Reichman
19:49 “We have an opportunity because of the urgency now to come together. Sometimes, we forget but there’s joy in food. We can figure this thing out, but we need to get it together.” -Danielle Nierenberg
20:21 “Often, we’re trying to solve the problem at the consumer level... But people don’t realize the challenges at a farmer level.” -Justine Reichman
21:01 “People underestimate the challenges farmers face in a lot of different areas. Food loss and food waste are certainly one.” -Danielle Nierenberg
21:43 “We don’t give farmers enough credit. They put so much love and labor into the food they’re growing and they don’t get enough credit for it, or they’re blamed for it.” -Danielle Nierenberg
22:28 “Farmers need to gain back their power and that’s going to happen soon because they are the solution to so many things.” -Danielle Nierenberg
23:54 “One of the greatest assets we can have as people is the ability to change our minds. The private sector has to be part of the solution.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Dani Nierenberg, Co-Founder and President of Food Tank.
Welcome, Dani.
Danielle Nierenberg: So nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
Justine Reichman: I'm so pleased to have you. I am glad that we're able to connect. I'm so excited to get an opportunity to hear from you a little bit about what you're doing in the Food Tank. So let's just jump in. So for those listeners and viewers that are listening to us today and that are not familiar with Food Tank, can you tell us a little bit about Food Tank?
Danielle Nierenberg: Sure. Food Tank has this very simple mission, which is to highlight stories of hope and success in food and agriculture systems so we can motivate and activate people to make change. We feel that if you hear something inspiring, it's much more likely to have you take action than if you hear something that's doomy and gloomy.
Justine Reichman: I think that's a great mission. That's a great vision. What inspired you to start a food chain.
Danielle Nierenberg: So my co-founder and I were working at an environmental think tank in DC, and I've traveled my whole career. I started looking at issues around gender and population. I was a Peace Corps volunteer. I studied the growth of factory farming around the world. I've been to more slaughterhouses and processing plants than anyone should ever go into, in the Global South and also in the United States. But really looking at what was happening around the world, at one point, during my stint at this environmental organization, we had a grant to study agricultural innovation very broadly. And so we spent about 18 months on the continent of Africa. We visited about half the continent, 25 countries, and this was around the time of the food and financial crisis. And so things were not great in a lot of places in the world. We certainly saw a lot of terrible things around hunger and malnutrition, and farmers really having a tough time. I also saw incredible stories of people, organizations and research institutions and others who are really making a difference. And in the environmental organization I worked for really focused on their problems, and I know we have to understand their problems to come up with solutions.
”I wanted to shift the paradigm where we talk about what’s hopeful and what the solutions are. And then, talk about the problems because that grabs people more.” -Danielle Nierenberg
But what I was seeing were these, again, these really hopeful things happening. Women's groups doing things in Ghana, and youth leaders doing things in Niger and elsewhere, and I wanted to sort of shift the paradigm where we talk about what's hopeful, and what the solutions are. And then talk about the problems because I just think that that grabs people more. It was kind of dumb at the time. We quit our jobs, and my co-founder ran up his credit cards, and I used all my vacation money that I had accrued at this organization, and we started Food Tank, and that was about nine years ago. It evolved into an organization where we have a really robust news website where we're publishing stories from around the world seven days a week, 365 days a year. We publish books and reports. Our first book came out a few years ago called Nourished Planet. We've published reports on things like true cost accounting in the food system, which sounds really nerdy, but it's really a way to look at how we price food, and cheap food isn't really cheap. We also do a lot of convening, we have summits.
“Cheap food isn’t really cheap.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Even during the pandemic, for the first six months of the pandemic, I interviewed maybe 300 experts from around the world. We did live streams every day just getting their thoughts on what was happening. Everyone from the chief economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to Farmers Market managers in places like Minneapolis, just seeing how they were pivoting. Talking to people like Chef Dan Barber, and then women farmers in Kenya, all of these really inspiring ways that people were getting food to their communities, or making changes, or talking about going from big global food systems to regionalized and localized food systems. So it was really, really inspiring. Now, we're back on the road again, and we've had three Food Tank Summits this year as part of our nourishing the America tour. The first was at Huston Tillotson University as part of South by Southwest, in Austin in March, and then we had a really great summit with Spelman College around women leaders and technology and food systems. And that was great. And then just last week, we had our DC Summit with the University of District of Columbia in urban agriculture.
So it's been a really great kickoff to being back in person and seeing how organizations and institutions have really coped with the pandemic. I don't have to tell you, there's been a lot of suffering and we all know that the restaurant industry has been one of the hardest hit and workers have been really hard hit, but I'm also seeing so many interesting ways that people are pivoting again. It's so interesting to watch and to be a really small part of it and help publicize those stories.
“It was an accident turned into something more, and was very mission-driven.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: Just from listening to you to from the beginning when you started nine years ago, amazing. Okay, I'm gonna quit my job, I'm gonna take my money and we're gonna do this. There are those entrepreneurs that come in, they're like, okay, I got my plan, I got my business plan. I mean, that wasn't me, either. It was like an accident. Mine was like, I came up with an idea. Started in Mexico City, I was going to help families, it was an accident that turned into something more and was very mission driven, very much like yours. And to me, those are some of the greatest stories and the most inspirational. So I love hearing that from you, but you really have been on purpose from day one. And from the way that you tell this story, you've grown in every step of the way, and even through the pandemic. And then after you've come out with huge successes and huge amounts of events and things that are coming through when people are really, they don't know how to come through COVID, they don't know how to come back together and people will try to navigate that. How did you know when to come back together, because it was a hard decision.
“It was important for us as part of the food movement to thrive off seeing other people.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: I mean, it was scary. We started off in Texas and granted, it was South by Southwest in Austin, which is very different from the rest of Texas. But we just decided to, we were as careful as we could be. South by didn't require anybody to show vaccinations, they didn't require people to mask and that's their decision. But I think it was the right time. It was before that crazy variant that now is getting everybody in New York, and in Philadelphia, and Baltimore where I live, but I think it's time we have to learn. I just think back to what I've heard, Dr. Fauci says, during all this, eventually, we have to get back to normal. We have to be careful, but we have to get back to some sort of normality where this is seen as something we just deal with like the flu. And if people are careful, and people get vaccinated, and people do the things that I hope that they'll do, then we can get through this. But I think it was important for us as part of the food movement, we're a very small part of it, but we all have, we all thrive. I mean, I'm sure you do thrive off seeing other people. Especially after these two years, it was just so exciting to see people, we've all ages. It was so exciting to see people that you haven't seen in two and a half years and to commend them on what they've been doing. Because, again, there are so many organizations that have just come through this, excelled and helped so many people. We were talking about our friend, Steven Ritz, and I remember talking to him at the very beginning of the pandemic where he was still going to work every day and still making sure that kids and his students and their families got fed. And he pivoted in so many ways. So it's time to get back together.
Justine Reichman: And you see him like, I watched these reds and you see his Instagram and his LinkedIn, and he has been traveling around the world to make his mission and his program known and continuing to educate people. And he was one of the first people that I saw starting to get back out there.
Danielle Nierenberg: Yeah, he's an inspiration. And he's very careful. I just hung out with him at a meeting in New York last week, he was masked and hugging everybody, and making sure that his story is told and heard.
“It is scary to get back out there in this time… And it’s hard to do when we’re not collaborating together.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: It's great. I think it's important to share those things with people because it is scary to get back out there in this time, and education, communication and collaboration is all part of it. It's absolutely hard to do when we're so isolated, and we've tried, right? It's not that things did not continue to happen. It's hard to do in a silo, and it's hard to do when we're not collaborating together. And it's just the energy that we feed off of, and I hate to use that word energy. I feel like I moved from New York to California with that word energy. You know what I mean?
Danielle Nierenberg: I feed off hearing other people. This is something that I just recently discovered at a meeting, I get frustrated and I hadn't felt that sort of frustration. Frustration is kind of what fuels me. Hearing from some corporate executives, who I will not name, and what they think, and their views of workers in the food system, some anger happened, and some frustration happened. I was like, oh, I'm back. Somebody said to me, they wrote to me afterwards because they heard this conversation. They were like, it was nice to see that little Dani spark. And I'm like, yeah, I've kind of missed that. Because I do get frustrated at long meetings, and I get frustrated by people who think they know. And it was like, nice to be a little bit pumped up again.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I would agree. You need to have that back and forth, that is the dichotomy between people's experiences and opinions. And it's sort of when you're in person, it's a different relationship between people versus when you're over Zoom.
Danielle Nierenberg: Zoom is very polite, and not that I wasn't polite. I mean, I might have not been as polite as I should have been. But this is all very polite, but you can get into kind of a little heated exchange with people when you're in person. And that's great. Not that you're throwing punches or anything, but I'm not gonna listen to BS from corporate folks who think they know everything you do. You know what I mean? Especially when it comes to workers. Workers have had such a hard time. I'm not going to name the chain that I talked to you about, but it's a place where a lot of people get coffee. And I've heard, I've personally interviewed workers from those who've been fired because they tried to organize, they worked with other workers who had COVID during the pandemic, or they've been assaulted by frustrated customers. And you can't tell me their lives are just full of roses and butterflies when they've been through so much these last few years and even before then.
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I would agree.
I want to get back a little bit to the inspiration and some of the stories that inspired you to start Food Tank. Can you share a couple of those?
“There’s so much we can learn from farmers in other parts of the world. But it was one of those moments that you’re just, ‘Ah! This is what it’s all about’.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: I remember, I was in India and I had visited this organic farm that was run by the Self Employed Women's Association. It's called SEWA. It's actually the biggest workers union in the world with more than a million members, and it's all women. And some of them have started this organic farm to grow things like rice, herbs and other things, and then work with women in urban settings to sell them under the SEWA label. And these were higher quality products, but they were still being sold at a reasonable price. Poor folks often get the worst food, so they're trying to change that paradigm. But I remember sitting with these women and they just fed me. I carry a notebook everywhere, and I'm scribbling things, and blah, blah, blah. And so I had finished asking them questions and getting it translated back to me, and then they sort of turned it on me. They wanted to know because they knew I had spent a lot of time in Sub Saharan Africa and they're like, what did people do there? And how are they dealing with climate change? And how do they deal with pests on their farms? It was just thi really wonderful opportunity to share what Food Tank has learned. Sharing that I think is so important. And I think the south to north, learning we have so much to learn from farmers and other parts of the world who have been dealing with climate change or accepting that they're dealing with climate change for much longer than farmers here. I feel like there's so much we can learn from farmers in other parts of the world. So that was one of the things. It was not like, oh, this big epiphany moment. I rarely have those. But just looking back and I'm like, oh, that's why I exist. That's why I do what I do. And yeah, I'll just stop there. But it was one of those moments where you're just like, ah, this is what it's all about.
Justine Reichman: So what was it like when you realized and you heard those stories to go from there to starting Food Tank?
Danielle Nierenberg: I think it was a little bit like what I said before, I don't want to be so doom and gloom. That does not motivate people. What motivates people is hearing stories like that one, or I hope it does. It was like, hey, we have to do something different here. This isn't working like this, is it different from when I was nine years younger. If there was a point in my life where I could either keep doing this and sort of treading water, I also have to say that I kind of reached where I was going to reach at this organization. I was never going to move up into anything else, and that's a whole different conversation.
Justine Reichman: What were you doing before this?
Danielle Nierenberg: I worked at an environmental organization. I was the director of our food and agriculture program, but that was gonna be it for me. A little bit of an old boys club. Not that I wanted to be the podcaster I am now or the moderator I am now, I didn't even think of those things. I just wanted to do something different that motivated me. I think I was becoming not as excited. What I've discovered over the last nine years is that I need to be excited. We were talking about that energy before, and it's not a new agey, you need that energy to just keep going.
Justine Reichman: Going up in the morning to continue on your mission and your day.
“Food and agriculture can be part of the solution if we get it right. The urgency of getting it right is greater than ever before.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: Yeah. I feel like you have that too. You need to be excited, you need to be a little hyped up. I think that's where Food Tank was born. We wanted to start something that was really just different. And I think at that time, especially, there was a gap. It was either environmental organizations or food organizations. And now what you're seeing is that environmental organizations are embracing agriculture and embracing food, because they see it as part of the solution. And that's what I want people to come away with. Food is the solution to some of our most pressing environmental and social problems, whether it's the climate crisis, or workers rights, or any of these things. Food and agriculture can be part of the solution if we get it right. And the urgency of getting it right is greater than ever before. I was talking to Julia Collins, the leader of Planet FWD, which helps companies become carbon neutral. She's like, we have less than a hundred months to turn this around, the climate crisis. And if you think of it that way, you can either be like, okay, it's over. Or you can be like, we have a hundred months to do this. And we can, because human ingenuity is so great. And people like her inspire me because she's like, we have a hundred months, but we can do it. That's the thing we can do.
Justine Reichman: And I think it's also about bringing together the people with all this different information to be able to inspire all these other people that have so many resources and interests, so that we can really collaborate and figure this out together because there's so much information out there. And so many different people have so many different interests, but if we can pull all these different people, pull all the different information and work together, we can hopefully do that. Because absolutely, it's all about, I'd love to coin this phrase that my mother said to me as I was growing up, surround yourself with the experts around you that you need to be able to solve problems. And that's so true, because we can't know everything.
Danielle Nierenberg: No, and that interaction is key. And it goes back to what we were talking about, we need to be around one another to come up with those solutions.
“Everything that I do is everything that I love.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: It's a group effort. It really takes a village, as I like to say, takes a village for sure. So you came up with this idea to do through Tank. It's energized by every part of your being from what I can see. For me, everything that I do is everything that I love. So it becomes my mission, my hobby, everything aside from my house which I just moved into in July.
Danielle Nierenberg: Congratulations.
Justine Reichman: And my dogs.
Danielle Nierenberg: They're feeling better.
Justine Reichman: So far, they seem to be keeping the food down. So with all that, I would ask you, what's next for you? But it sounds like the next 100 months, what's next?
“We have an opportunity because of the urgency now to come together. Sometimes, we forget but there’s joy in food. We can figure this thing out, but we need to get it together.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: For all of us, though, I think you've been talking about this collaboration, we all need to get behind this. I think the last five years, especially in the United States, showed how divided we were. But I think we have this opportunity now, again, it goes back to the urgency. We have an opportunity because of the urgency now to come together, and there's I think a lot of joy in that. And I think when we talk about these issues, sometimes we forget. But there's joy in this kind of work, there's joy and food, there's joy telling stories and being a storyteller. It doesn't have to be so depressing. We can figure this out, but we just need to get it together.
“Often, we’re trying to solve the problem at the consumer level... But people don’t realize the challenges at a farmer level.” -Justine Reichman
Justine Reichman: I would agree. The other question I have for you, and I don't know what your thoughts are on this. So often, we're trying to solve the problem at the consumer level. And then other times, you're talking to researchers and we really need to solve it at the farmers level because there's a lot of problems at the farmers level. All this wasted crop, there's really a lack of education around that. I wonder what your perspective on that is, because I think that there's a lack of information about it. And the numbers are staggering when you think of that. I know that we need to work on it at both ends, but I think people don't realize the challenges at a farmer level.
“People underestimate the challenges farmers face in a lot of different areas. Food loss and food waste are certainly one.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: Absolutely. I think people underestimate the challenges farmers face in a lot of different areas. Food loss and food waste is certainly one. And often, farmers are burying crops instead of selling them because they look a little wonky, or they look a little bit imperfect. And I think all that education around eating ugly food and embracing that, we've talked about it for about 10 years and people still want the perfect looking carrot at the grocery store, and they want the best looking apple. That's got to be changed. Farmers can address those challenges, because otherwise, it kills me that we don't give farmers enough credit. They put so much love and labor into the food that they're growing, and then they don't get credit for it, or they're blamed for it. At the beginning of the pandemic, those supply chain disruptions and you saw farmers being forced to toss food away, that wasn't their fault. Those were policy decisions and other decisions made long before the pandemic. These are systemic changes that need to happen. What we've seen with racial injustice in this country, there are policies in place for centuries that have led to where we are today, and those things need to be changed. And the same goes for farmers, and subsidies, and loans, and the things that they've been locked into. Farmers need to gain back their power, and I think that's going to happen soon because they are the solution to so many of the things that we've been talking about.
“We don’t give farmers enough credit. They put so much love and labor into the food they’re growing and they don’t get enough credit for it, or they’re blamed for it.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Justine Reichman: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Because I think that it's really not talked about enough. I think people focus on the way that we can solve the problem, but I think there's a greater problem at the farmer level that I hope we can solve because I think that's gonna really, hopefully give us a greater chance at solving this problem in the next 100 months.
“Farmers need to gain back their power and that’s going to happen soon because they are the solution to so many things.” -Danielle Nierenberg
Danielle Nierenberg: Absolutely, absolutely.
Justine Reichman: What's on your agenda on a personal level for Food Tank in the next few years, any new content that you're putting out, any big changes?
Danielle Nierenberg: One of the things that my Co-Founder, Bernard Pollack and I have done is start what we call a Chief Sustainability Officer Group. It's made up of Chief Sustainability officers from small, medium and large companies, but also CEOs and Founders. There are startups there too. But it's really been this opportunity to hear from companies what their greatest challenges are, whether it's around packaging, how they create awareness around labeling to consumers, that kind of thing. It has been this really awesome opportunity to really hear from companies. I swear, if you'd asked me 15 or 20 years ago if I'd ever be talking to companies? I would have said, hell, no. They're the problem, they're the evil, or the food companies are the worst.
“One of the greatest assets we can have as people is the ability to change our minds. The private sector has to be part of the solution.” -Danielle Nierenberg
I think one of the greatest assets we can have as people is the ability to change our minds. I know that the private sector has to be part of the solution. So listening to these companies, I'm not going to name names. Some of them are big companies who have people inside them who really want to make big changes, but they're fighting against a huge machine. And then you have these mission driven companies who started off doing the right thing. I think there's a lot of learning that they can have between one another. And it's been really, really interesting to me. We started it during the pandemic, and will eventually be able to meet in person at places like Expo East and Expo West. Those are the natural food conferences that happen every year. But I just think it's so interesting. So that group has really been, I think, an awesome opportunity to learn from companies and then they also learn from one another, and I think they also learn from these guest speakers that we have.Again, trying to change the paradigm a little bit. We're going to do that with an academic working group too. So that academics who we're working in the food and agriculture space can learn from one another. I feel like they only see each other a couple times a year at conferences and having the opportunity to learn what's out there or share research will also be really beneficial. So those are the things I'm interested in right now.
Justine Reichman: Dani, are those groups something that you have to be invited to? Or is that something that somebody would apply to? Or how would that work?
Danielle Nierenberg: There are about 120 members of the CSO group right now. And it's been us asking, in the beginning, and now people are asking us if they can join. It's just like writing me an email at danielle@foodtank.com. We set up a call and figure out if it's a good fit. It's been really, really exciting to have these companies reach out to us now.
Justine Reichman: Well, I asked because I figured our listeners or viewers might want to know.
Danielle Nierenberg: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: Wonderful. Well, Dani, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. It was great to have you, great to learn a little bit about Food Tank. I'm going to be following along and see how we can participate and maybe collaborate in the future so that we can really amplify your story and those of the people that you're participating in collaborating with and sharing their stories even.
Danielle Nierenberg: Justine, I'm such a longtime admirer of yours, so thank you for having me. Thank you so much for the work that you do, and it was really a pleasure to be part of this podcast. Again, keep up the great work and I hope I get to see you in person. I get to like to work on something together.
Justine Reichman: I would love that. I would love that. Thank you so much.
Danielle Nierenberg: Thank you.
