 Now, to make this conversation have a little more context, we have three amazing panelists who are going to come on stage and join Roy for a conversation. So welcome to the stage, Anna LePay, Program Director of the Pantereya Foundation, Deb Eschemeier, the new Social Entrepreneur and Head of Innovation of Arizona State University's Sweat Center for Sustainable Food Systems, and Manoj Sinha of Husk Power. Welcome to the stage. All right, awesome. Thank you for coming and participating in this. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to just jump right in and ask the first question which is around Robin, what do you think is the most important issue for the future of food systems? And I'll start with you, Nounash. So to give you a context, I come from a state called Bihar in India that has a lot of people, 110 million people. And we are a state where we don't have a whole lot of productivity when it comes to agriculture. So even though we have land, we are not producing as much as it could. And with a population of 110 million people, it is going to become even more challenging. So it is at a very basic level, a shortage of food for a lot of people when it comes to nutrition or is, you know, two square meals. Deb. Yeah, this is a really small question, and the thing is that there's obviously a lot of challenges, and you can talk about everything from climate change to the state of our democracy. But I would have to just say that I feel right now that the lack of empathy is one of our biggest challenges in the food system, because until individuals, corporations, and governments actually fully are sensitive to and aware of the impact of their decisions on people on the planet, we're actually going to continue to see the injustice occur. Yeah, well, I totally agree. And I would say, again, small question here, but when I think about what is the biggest problem in our food system, it's one we've had for a long time, which is it's never been a crisis of productivity, it has been a crisis of democracy. So what I mean by that is you can look around the world today, we are globally producing 2,900 calories for every single person on the planet, which if you don't count your calories, that's more than anybody most people need. And yet UNICEF, you might have seen this, UNICEF just released its first significant global assessment of childhood nutrition in 20 years and found that one in three children is malnourished. So it's not a problem of not being enough, but that malnourishment is actually connected to not just not getting enough calories, for the most part it's connected to getting actually too many calories of the wrong thing. So for instance, 62% of teenagers in industrialized countries drink a sugary drink a day, and only 42% of babies under six months old are exclusively breastfed. And so it's really this question of democracy, of who's deciding what products are being marketed to mothers and to children, what regulations are in place in our agricultural system, what kinds of food systems are being incentivized. And to me, the solution then to fixing food has to do with making sure more of us have a seat at the table to ask those questions and to offer up our answers. Great, I think the challenge, as you said, it's not just quantity, it's quality and how the distribution takes place. So whenever you have transformation in the food system, there's some people that win and some people that lose. There's a whole question of equity that you just brought up. As we think about the future of food systems, how do we think we're going to actually manage that or deal with that? How do we ensure that everyone gets access to good food, quality food? Should we go, go ahead, Ma'am. I'll do that again. So I see this from, so we are an energy company, we provide energy that farmers can use to irrigate their land and so forth. So I see this problem from production perspective. And again, I'll take it back to states that we serve in India or Tanzania. They don't have irrigation system to irrigate and therefore they cannot produce enough food to take it to the market. They're completely disconnected from the market system. So even though the land is very fertile, they're not able to produce as much as they can and therefore they are not able to bring food to their own family that they should. Which is kind of sad because the enabling factor to that production is missing to a large extent. Talking about democratization, they don't have a marketplace to sell their food. Half of the food they produce probably gets rotten because there's no refrigeration system, for example. So it's kind of a sad situation that you have a pretty fertile land and you cannot produce, and if you produce, you cannot sell or take it to the market where you should. And this question is something that we considered a lot during the Obama administration and specifically, obviously, economic security for all would be fantastic. But when I had the privilege of serving and being President Obama's judicial policy advisor, I looked at every single federal nutrition policy and considered how it can be improved. Specifically, supplemental nutrition assistance program. How many of you are familiar with food stamps and SNAP, right? So that's impacting 45 million Americans, half of those are children. That program, for example, should be reinforced and strengthened and have more investments put into it instead of right now, where the eligibility requirements are being reconsidered and now there's fewer that are going to be able to receive this program. So that's an action that right now we can work harder to actually protect that program that's one of the most impactful government programs that currently exists to provide food for all. The other thing I do want to mention since this is about investment, is that I'm not sure if you guys are aware, but in the venture capital world, only 3% of the funds go to women-owned firms. That's pitiful. This is a fantastic opportunity to look at women-founded firms. And how are you going to invest in that and put the strength back into the female-founded firms? So picking up on what you were saying, Deb, I think about how do we ensure that whatever the future of food looks like, whether you are looking at these visions you all are talking about or the food systems we're looking to build. How do we ensure that actually they impact everyone equitably? And I think one of the ways we do that is being sure that we have those that could be most impacted that are most closely in touch with our food system at the table. And so it's looking at in terms of impact investing world, do you have farmers and food producers as advisors or on your boards if you're actually developing a technology in food? Do you have women? Do you have indigenous communities represented? Are you bringing those voices into your deliberations? And when I look at what are some of the most innovative technologies that have the greatest benefits to reducing biodiversity loss, diverting the climate crisis, really building healthy food systems. Those technological innovations have come out of having all of those people in the room and inside those conversations. So that to me feels like a really critical piece. Yeah, it also makes me think about what the true cost of the current food system we have is actually, so here's a quick question. I asked this of everybody. One diet related disease everybody knows of is diabetes. What do you think the cost of one year of diabetes care for the entire United States is? What do we spend on diabetes care? Just turn to your neighbor and just take a quick guess. Okay, just a quick guess. What do you think we're spending per year on diabetes care? All right, stop. How many people said around 50 billion? Is that under 50 billion or so? No, actually it's $327 billion. And I asked this of public health officials and they're almost always off by almost in an order of magnitude. Most people guess between 30 and 50 billion. And it tells me that we have just completely lost. And we spend $1 billion in nutrition research. We spend $5 billion in ag and food research. And even of that, 95% of that is going to six crops. And I think we've just got this system that is so out of balance. So the question is how do we get that back into balance? And how do we really create a food system where that doesn't have all of these costs? So when you start thinking about what can change, what are you most excited by? I guess that's the, let me just throw out in terms of transformation, technologies, movements, what's getting you excited? Manush. So I have the privilege, I guess, to see what vertical hydroponics is doing in North America. We don't even know about that in my own home state in India. So there are a lot of technologies that have been, I think, proven and is getting in very advanced stages. So we don't even have to invent those. So in my context, in India, where we have 1.2 billion people to feed, we can actually take the best practices and leave frog. We don't have to do that incremental discovery or invention. Take the best practices, which is available, contextualize it to whatever you are doing, and make it happen at scale. And in our case, since we do energy as a service, we use the waste product of the crops that are grown to produce energy. So we are actually cutting carbon. So the climate problem we are solving by using the feedstock that gets generated as waste. So it is, you have to evolve and move or take a leap to the next stage and not go through incremental steps to make that happen. And we are at disadvantage today because we are very far away from these developments. But we can take that leap and sort of start with a smartphone and not go through those dumb phones. And what you do is just such a great example of creating a circular economy, which anybody who just takes a look at the food system sees the need for. Yeah, you know, what's giving me a lot of hope right now and where we are with the food system and many of the social change movements that we're working on is Gen Z. I have so much faith in these and the young people that are gonna make up 40% of consumers by 2020 who are taking action in their own hands, whether it's climate change or it's gun reform. And it's going to force corporations to be transparent to make it so that the business round table a few months ago just declared that they're going to be responsible towards all stakeholders and not just shareholders. And that's where we're gonna actually see a serious transformation. So I'm seeing a lot of hope in what's to come. And I don't know if you heard this Deb, but or if any of you did, but I saw some young people talking about how they don't wanna be called Gen Z because they're not the end of the line. They wanna be Gen GND or Gen Green New Deal. So can start using that one. But I've also been super encouraged by the young people that we work with. And to me, I think one of the transformations that has been really thrilling to me, I've been kind of working in this world of food systems change for two decades as an author and a funder and an advocate. And there have been so many transformations that have really caused for hope. But actually one that I've been particularly thrilled by is actually a transformation inside of our minds and our heads. And it's a transformation in how we think about food systems change and the connection between the conversation about food and the conversation about climate. And what I mean by that is about 10 years ago when I really started digging into this issue, the fact that the food system is responsible for one third of all greenhouse gas emissions. So that's pretty significant. Was news to me. And I remember at the time an inconvenient truth had just come out Al Gore's documentary and there was a lot of conversation about climate and very little conversation about this linkage between food and the climate crisis. Flash forward to now. And last week Al Gore just convened a high level conversation on his farm in Tennessee with policymakers and leaders and farmers and ranchers to talk about how for serious about climate we have to talk about food. And that to me is this thrilling, thrilling change that now people really understand that not only is our food system kind of this casualty of the crisis, right? Farmers and ranchers on the front lines. It's also this key culprit but also it's really this key part of the cure that harnessing, we can harness food systems to really help mitigate and adapt to climate change. So I feel like that's a really thrilling change that gives me a lot of hope. Yeah, I'm actually also quite excited by the potential for the food system to address some of the greatest problems in our society. So climate change is one of them. The other is food systems actually bring really diverse people together, right? I mean, you think about the farmer's market, that's when rural and urban people get together. When you, if you're gonna, if we're gonna deal with the polarization in society, food has gotta be part of that, like where you gather people around. The other is I think the other big solution that the food system represents is for our diet and for health. And I didn't realize this, so I started talking to a lot of nutritionists and doctors out there. Do you know how many weeks doctors study nutrition in four years of medical school? Take a guess. It's actually the recommended is four days and the actual is four hours. And what that means is doctors graduate knowing nothing about nutrition, yet nutrition diet is 60 to 70% of non-communicable diseases are diet related. Like in what universe does that make any sense, okay? You're teaching doctors to cure, but you're ignoring the number one reason why people are ill, right? It just does not make sense. And it touches on what you've been talking about is we have to start understanding how everything is linked and the connection between food and health, food and climate, food and equity. And I think that's the conversation that's gonna happen. So we have the time for 30 second final thoughts. Manush, one final thoughts. For full disclosure, my wife is a doctor. And you don't go to her for nutrition advice. I have to say there's a lot of doctors really under, for the doctors out there. I know that there's a real movement out there that just fix that and we need to encourage that to happen. So what is one thing, like how do you get, how do you, how do you want everybody to get involved? What's the, call the action you would ask? As an entrepreneur, I think, you know, we never thought, or at least personally, I did not think of food or production of that and so on and so forth as a thing to do or a problem to solve. I think that narrative has to change. And we as entrepreneurs need to embrace that as another sexy business to get in. That's my thought. Okay. For me, I think it's about taking ownership of your choices that you make every day and it seems sometimes insurmountable about what we're facing with climate change but you're making that choice every day at breakfast and at lunch and dinner and snacks and then in the way we educate our kids and to throw some more statistics at you. You know, the average school lunch, only a dollar 19 is actually spent on the food. Dollar 19, guys, like this is the future. If we're not gonna prioritize our kids' health then what are we prioritizing? And it's, this is where all these decisions are made. It's by us, right? We are the voters that are putting everyone, the elected officials in office. This is, that's our choice. It's our power. And so I just, it's a moment of just remembering that we have the power. We can do it. It's in our daily choices and it's who we put into elected office. Last minute, last minute. Yeah, so again, small question. I think one of the things I'm really interested in, I've been working with philanthropists around this question of how do we harness, I think the impact investing work is so important but also how do we harness philanthropic dollars to help kind of beta test the innovative policies and beta test these technologies and explore kind of that edge of what I really see as this moment of urgency to really develop those nature-based agroecological solutions and the policies that will support them. And I think when you start seeing that policy work on the ground, you see exactly what you were talking about in terms of how food can bring diverse people together and to your point, Deb, about how food is key for empathy. One of my favorite events ever was at the launch of a policy in LA called the Good Food Purchasing Program. And on stage with me was an animal rights activist, the head of the public health, the county public health division, an environmentalist, a teamster from the local labor union, the teamsters, the CEO of a food distribution company. And it was like harmony on stage because they had all seen their shared interest in this new procurement policy in LA. So I really feel that sense of how can we harness philanthropy to invest in those kinds of innovative policies that can really make the kinds of changes we need. Fantastic, I like that they're one of our grantees. Yes. Fantastic, thank you. And we didn't plan that so. No, we didn't. We're done. Thank you very much. And remember, go to www.foodvisionprize.org on October 29th. And if you're interested, put your vision forward. Thank you.