 why these things don't, you know, gain momentum, why the research doesn't, you know, have this sort of like, ding, okay, is because policymakers are controlled by money. And so that, you know, they don't read these reports, one, and two, they're not gonna change because they won't get elected the next, you know, election cycle if they, if they, you know, change how our agriculture systems work. So I think, you know, that's the issue here, right? We have too much control in the hands of too few. Daniel Nuremberg is my guest on this episode of Inside Idea is brought to you by 1.5 Media, Innovators Magazine, and sponsored by the Lohas Regenerative Foundation. Daniel is a world-renowned researcher, speaker, and advocate on all issues relating to our food system and agriculture. Daniel is president of FoodTank, foodtank.com is the website, and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world, and innovations in sustainable agriculture. Daniel is the recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award. Daniel founded FoodTank, a 501c3 nonprofit organization with Bernard Pollock in 2013 to build a global community for safe, healthy, and nourished eaters. The organization has more than 250 major institutional partners, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Christensen Fund, IFPRI, IFAD, Oxfam America, Slow Food USA, UN, FAO, and the Crop Trust, the Sustainable Food Trust, and academic institutions in all 50 states. FoodTank highlights hope, success, and innovative ideas in our food systems through original daily publications, research articles, a chart-topping podcast, interviews, and events and summits in major cities around the world. Prior to starting FoodTank, Daniel spent two years traveling to more than 35 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, meeting with hundreds of farmers and farmers, groups, scientists, and researchers, policy makers, and government leaders, students, and academics, journalists documenting her work and their work to help alleviate hunger and poverty while protecting the environment. She has built a worldwide social media web following, more than millions, 1.2 million, probably even more now, and it just is climbing and climbing each and every day. Tons of wonderful content. I know your head hasn't exploded yet, Daniel, but it's so wonderful to have you on the podcast and have you here live in front of me. Welcome. Thank you so much, Mark. Nice to see you. It's great to see you, and you deserve every one of those accolades, and I could go on much longer. And that's really why I wanted to talk to you. It's in the past that really hasn't been about you or pounding your chest on you. You've opened up a space and a voice, a platform, an area to bring out the important voices on the ground of farmers, of indigenous peoples, and a real diverse spread in the food industry, allowing them a safe place to talk about food, what is needing, lacking policies, and I suspect that's one big reason why you received the Julia Child Award in 2020, but I also believe it's just an amazing thing, and so I wanna thank you for that, but in that process, you've talked to thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people over the years and have heard all sorts of stories, but now I wanna hear your stories. That's why I've got you here. I wanna hear your story of what you've learned in this long process. For my listeners, you and I know each other from originally kind of online in the past, and then from the Eat Form, the Eat Foundation event in Stockholm, Sweden, then the Borrelia Center for Food and Nutrition in Italy, we've seen each other there, and then we're together on the Aleph Farms Sustainable Advisory Board. So our paths have crossed and we've kind of collaborated, and you wrote a wonderful contribution for Menu B, which hopefully will come out very soon. So basically, I wanna ask right off the bat, have you learned something in these times, not only of crisis, but in the year since you've been doing this work from all those people that you've talked to that is something that's emerging that you can share with us that, hey, this is what I'm hearing, this is really where we're going and what's emerging and what I'm getting from people? Sure, I mean, I think the thing that I've learned the most is that we need to listen more, and people like me maybe need to stop, talk less and listen more. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned over this sort of experience of being involved in this work for a long time is that there are so many people who don't, there are so many well-intentioned folks in the food and agriculture world who think that they have all the answers and that they can go into communities and tell communities what they need rather than asking those communities what they need or listening to what those communities need. And again, these projects like aid programs and development projects are so well-intentioned, but I think often you're missing the mark because communities all over the world have very particular needs and circumstances, and it's different in every country and every village and every municipality. And so I think that what I've learned is just sort of to ask less questions and listen to people. And it may sound sort of trite, but it's really the biggest lesson I've learned that you have to sort of immerse yourself in the challenges that people have and sort of understand them and let them tell you what they're experiencing rather than sort of giving them your take on it. I agree, and I appreciate you telling us that. And many respects, I wanna ask if that is because I agree as well. I think we find these shotgun solutions or these programs that we say, okay, and well, this will work all around the world or this will work here and it's developed by people in the US for people in India, Africa or in China or wherever it is. And it's kind of a developed or a Western world approach but they're not usually indigenous local regional solutions that have even taken culture and the diversity of the food systems in certain areas into consideration. How do you feel about that? Do you really feel, even though we talk about this global food systems and this global big problem that we've got to fix all over the world that it's really based upon local listening, local cultures, local implementations of things we can do? Yeah, I mean, I do think it has to be grassroots. It has to be, there's so many top-down approaches. You know this better than me that just haven't worked. And if you look at just like the US, for example, there's this really great elder activist, Karen Washington, who I've learned a lot from and she started Rising Root Farm in the Bronx. And over the years, I've been able to interview her and talk to her. And when we're talking especially, and I think this applies sort of globally too, when we're talking about communities of color or we're talking about underserved or historically marginalized communities, what they need is capital. They need investment. And then they need the people who invest to get the heck out of the way. And I think that communities know what they want, know what they need, know where the gaps are, but they have knowledge and I think we have assumed that they need to be educated and they need all of these things, especially from a white perspective, right? And, you know, in a Western perspective and what they actually need is just investment and then for the rest of us to, you know, like I said before, get out of the way, let them do what they need to do. And I also think that there's this lack of investment in allowing folks to experiment and, you know, and make mistakes and try again. And I think this is something that I think about a lot around philanthropy. And I know philanthropy is in this state of sort of flux right now and how it needs to change. And I think there needs to be more investment in financing of, hey, you can make mistakes. You can experiment and try things over and over again because we're stuck in this sort of cycle of two or five year grants, you know, all of us, the nonprofit world too, where, you know, if you don't meet these deliverables, then you're not gonna get another grant or, you know, you're not gonna get renewed or, you know, part of your money will be taken away because you messed up. And I think it's okay to mess up, right? And so, you know, I think there's a lot that needs to sort of change in how we think about where the solutions are and who should be implementing them and how that process works. There just, there needs to be a flip because as you know, and we've talked about this together, the urgency of what we're facing in the world, you know, our public health crisis, not just COVID, our climate crisis, our biodiversity loss crisis, all of these crises which are linked, right? But they're all, you know, they need to be solved and they need to be solved, you know, not by 2050, but by 2023, 2025, we don't have, you know, that much time to waste here. So the urgency of, you know, these issues, I think requires a flip, a paradigm flip of how we've been doing things. And I think, you know, the grassroots solutions are out there. We don't need to reinvent things. We don't need a lot of, we don't need more studies. We don't need more books, you know, we just need to do what people already know works and make sure that those solutions get implemented. I love that, and I'm glad you brought that up because that leads me right where kind of in the direction of where I want to go, you know, you've done the TED talks, you've hosted your own events, you've given your own talks, you have your own books. I mean, you helped Paul Hawking in his latest book that came out Regeneration in 2021. You've got Norwich Planet. Luckily, I got a nice signed copy here. It's a fabulous from the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition book. You've been involved in, with Thieb and many others, the letters to young farmers, you are a contributor in that book as well. And then, as you just mentioned, these, we don't need more books, we don't need more reports, more studies, let's research the problem of food. Food has been around, now we're getting ranges of 20,000 years of agriculture, of probably not the way we see it today as an industrial ag or even in regenerative practices, but we have been moving rocks, cutting down trees and doing some form of farming for well over 13,000 years, even longer now is what we're seeing from carbon dating and some other research popping up. And through the years, we met at the initial live meeting was at the Eat Form, the Eat Foundation and there was the Eat Lancet report, then Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition did some reports. You've been involved in different things and in the past, I was always, oh yeah, this report and it's gonna bring the science, it's really gonna help move the needle, it's really gonna, and even in the UN food system, which you kind of participated in, all of those things seem to lose momentum, fall flat a little bit, so to say, the report was maybe it was because it was a report, graphs, charts, science and things that people were bored to death and just passed out in the process, but it seems almost like they fell flat and so I would like to get your take on, if you agree of why you think that is and because I really, for most of those, I had this great hope like, oh my gosh, when this comes out, we're gonna see some great movement. Finally, and you and I are seeing this as well, food has now firmly become a topic in the United Nations for many years, it was hardly even there and discussed and so that's kind of also why I have this hope and so I'd like to get your thoughts and ideas of why you think that is and maybe if you also have those hopes, okay, here it comes. Yeah, no, I've always had those hopes. I think you and I are food and agriculture nerds, right? Like we get excited about data and science and innovation and so when those reports come out, I do get excited and I do hope that they will move the needle a little bit, but that has not been the case as we know and so again, there needs to be some, we need data, right? We need research, we need science. There's a lot already out there. There's a lot of gaps though, especially around nutrition, and what's actually happening in those underserved and marginalized communities that I talked about before. There's a lack of data and health around people of color, et cetera. So it's not that we don't need research but I think that what we need is more political will. We need more democratic institutions that can implement changes and what we have is a lot of corporate interference and control of our food systems and whether it's through lobbyists or through other means and I think we've lost, why these things don't gain momentum, why the research doesn't have this sort of like ding, okay, is because policymakers are controlled by money and so that they don't read these reports one and two, they're not gonna change because they won't get elected the next election cycle if they change how our agriculture systems work. So I think that's the issue here, right? We have too much control in the hands of too few and we're not, we don't have this political will to make the change that these reports suggest. So I can be flippant about, hey, we don't need more reports or books. We do in the sense that we need more people to understand and read them. We need more storytelling for sure. And I think sometimes when these reports fall flat is because they didn't tell the story well or they assume things, listen, I love the eat forum, right? And I love so much that they do and I'm friends with a lot of people there but that first Eat Lancet report turned a lot of people off because it didn't, it identified one diet, right? That they thought would save the planet and there's so many different cultures and so many different ways of looking at food that we need, it needs to be a little bit more diverse. And so with the Eat Lancet 2.0, 2.0 report that's coming out I guess in two years or next year, I'm really excited about that again because I'm an agriculture nerd, right? I am too. I'm excited to see what it says but I think it will be more inclusive and more diverse and talk about different cultures in different ways. So these are things that we're learning. I mean, that's a really good example of how they responded to like, hey, there was some criticism, here's what we're gonna do now. And that's the kind of thing that's gonna push the needle, right? Like responding to the changes that need to be made. But again, we're entrenched in a political system all over the world where agriculture and food, whether the United Nations or others are finally taking food on. I mean, it's 2022, they should have been doing these things before. We still have political systems that are corrupt and don't focus on the needs of farmers and eaters. And that's where I see the real problem. I totally agree and I'm glad you brought that up because you recently just kind of, I don't know if it was a host or moderated or you participated in. And we had a pretty exciting thing happen in the U.S. I hope, I don't know if it was exactly what you want but can you tell us a little bit what's happened in governance and policy around food? There was some kind of a government meeting on food, farm bill, something. What happened? Tell us about that. So Food Tank is involved in what's called the Healthy Living Coalition, which is private sector non-profits, health experts and others who have sort of come together to focus on different issues for better health. One of the things that we focused on was the Food Donation Improvement Act, which makes it easier to donate food that would otherwise go to waste, both from individuals and farmers and businesses, restaurants, hospitality and make it easier for that food to get where it needs to go instead of ending up in landfills. You know this statistic or this phrase better than anyone. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. So we have a real issue here. And so if we can have legislation that actually solves for some of this problem, then it can, again, move the needle, make sure that we're not wasting as much food in the United States. And what happens is that farmers don't have incentives often to donate food that would otherwise go to waste, that just never makes it off the farm, right? Because they don't have a market for it or it's not the right size, because of sort of, I don't even know how to describe it. Standards from grocery stores or restaurants, like I want a carrot that's three inches long, a tiny carrot, not one that's six inches long, that kind of thing, those perfection standards that kind of lead to food waste. But if farmers had incentives, if they were actually paid, or if there were tax credits or those kinds of things, they would give that food away. Otherwise it's easier for them to compost it or just dig it back into the ground. And so that makes it easier for the food donation improvement act will make it easier for farmers. It will definitely make it easier for businesses who fear liability. You know, they fear being sued because if they donate something that makes someone sick, this removes that kind of that liability. And by the way, we have laws here in the United States that just didn't go far enough. And so these companies, they continue to fear it. It was the Good Samiritan Act that was passed in the 90s. It just didn't go far enough. So this is an improvement on that bill that came out in 1996. And so these kinds of things have a lot of bipartisan support. We had Republicans and Democrats on stage talking about how great this legislation is and why it's important and why it needs to be passed. And so hopefully we'll see it passed in Congress this year or hopefully it will be wrapped up into other legislation and passed that way. So we'll see what happens. Another thing, and this is not to deal with good ways, but this past weekend I, Food Tank helps plan for Nyman Ranch, which is a sustainable pork company here in the United States. Very small, about 700 family farmers are part of it. But we hosted their hog farmer appreciation weekend. And it was so interesting to me because the whole, the Nyman Ranch is based in Iowa. And we had the whole delegation, the whole congressional delegation, Republicans like Chuck Grassley and Democrats on the other side who are supporting family farmers. They gave video testimonies of how important it is to support family farmers. So I think there is this growing sense that when everything else in the United States and really elsewhere in the world is very partisan or very black or white, that when we talk about food, when we talk about farmers, especially that it can be non-partisan, that it transcends that kind of political nastiness that we're seeing everywhere else. And so those are the kinds of things that like give me hope. I don't know how, I don't know how much, sorry, my cat is howling. That's fine. Hopefully he'll stop. I don't know how much change that kind of thing makes, but it does give me the hope that things are moving forward, especially on the food and agriculture front. If you can get Republicans and the Democrats to talk about these things and have the same opinion, that's the kind of push we need to move forward. We had to push years ago in the United States with the Dole McGovern Bill and Act that came out, which was pretty bipartisan and came together was good. But there's McGovern now, there's another McGovern now that is moving forward on things. I know you have some connections and maybe have spoken to him before or done something, but are there any new movements and government Congress that are moving in the right direction that gives you hope right now as far as farm bills, food in the United States, anything that you've heard of or new conferences that are coming about that you're saying, boy, this is hopeful. And if there's not, I mean, what I'm really trying to tickle out is what things, since your ears to the ground, so to say, you speak to all these people, such diverse groups, so many people, farmers, food producers, what do we have to be hopeful for? What's coming down the road? And is it something to worry about that we need to make sure our voice is heard or is it gonna be hopeful that maybe this will help us? I have to be hopeful, Mark. It's my job, like it's my mission statement, right, to tell stories of hope and success. So I'm always hopeful. As I get older, I get a little bit more cynical, but I do think it is, what gives me hope is young people and always have, even when I was a young person, I've always felt older than I think I will, even when I was young. But it's young people who give me hope. It's students, it's young farmers. And I'll give you an example, the National Young Farmers Coalition here in the United States. You know, thousands of young farmers who are either part of it or interact with the coalition. They do a survey every couple of years. And you know, here in the United States, we have the Ag Census. And it doesn't always reach a diverse group of farmers. And what I learned from this last National Young Farmers survey is that they've really made incredible inroads in reaching diverse farmers, Black, Indigenous, people of color who are young and in farming. And the Ag Census just doesn't do that. So getting those diverse viewpoints, putting them into a survey, understanding the challenges and obstacles that young farmers especially face, things like access to land. These are things that farmers all over the world face. Young farmers access to land, lack of access to financial resources and capital, lack of business education around the business of farming. In the United States, a lot of young farmers are saddled and burdened, really heavily burdened by student loan debt and the high price of healthcare, et cetera. You know, despite all of these challenges, they're really excited about farming. They're excited about getting into farming. As we know, farmers are aging all over the world. The average age in the United States is about 60. It's the same in other parts of the world, like, you know, in regions of the world like Sub-Saharan Africa. So we need this interest from young farmers. But if they don't have the resources, if they have to take, you know, two or three off-farm jobs so that they can just pay the bills, then we're not going to see this, you know, this sustainable sort of practices that we need and or, you know, or the kinds of diversity we need in farming, not just diversity of crops, which we certainly need, but also the diversity of people that are important to farming, you know, young women, trans folks, you know, people who identify as queer, we need more, you know, people of color who are, you know, feel that farming is a viable career option for them. And so, you know, it's that organization and organizations like it all over the world. There's WIPARD, which is Young Professionals in Agricultural Development, you know, which, again, all, you know, works with agricultural professionals, researchers and farmers in different parts of the world. Those are the folks who give me hope because they are trying to, you know, make sure that young farmers' voices are heard, that young agricultural professionals' voices are heard, whether it's at big conferences or small ones or, you know, on Capitol Hill or, you know, in different kinds of parliaments. Getting that, that those young voices heard and listened to, I think is really important. So that gives me hope, especially here in the United States. You are so right when you say we're both kind of nerds to this respect, but you took it even a little bit further. Your husband, he's an agricultural economist, isn't he? Yeah, it's a lot of nerdy conversations. Yeah, so I'm sure there's, you know, it's surrounded around this topic of food constantly and, you know, both that's his work and it's your work basically. So I'm sure it's ever present and what you do and then I believe the little I know about you as well, say you're also a pretty big foodie. With Food Tank, and I mean, 2013 doesn't seem like a long time, but in that short amount of time, you have really placed a movement on the map of our world around food and knowledge around food. And I thank you for that. I hate to give this referral or this reference and that is I think that most big movements in our world have always been centered around basic resources and to be more specific around food. I mean, Gandhi's big movement was around salt in the food movement and about farmers' voices, about how we produce food, how the lack of food is. And we both know Ron Finley and others in that whole movement you mentioned, some fabulous people already in our discussion. But basically what it's coming out to is producing your own food is like printing your own money. It's like growing your own money. It's a sense of security. It's a sense of connection to nature and environment. If you're, even though it's seen as a job or maybe a career choice to some people, if you even do it half-heartedly, you can see the impact on human health, on nutrition, and you see the impact on our environment in that process. I believe in the good of humanity that that would say, what are the better practices that we can use? What are the better ways to do that? And so I'm kind of asking in that process, there's a lot of organizations popping up now to help transition the current farmers and those of the future to organic regenerative practices, other type of practices to prepare for that wave because they're realizing that's the stability for the future to really, to get that harnessed and in. What are you seeing in that other movements and organizations who are doing that and how do you feel about that, that direction that we're taking from industrial ag and industrial type of chemical, heavy chemical processing of foods? I mean, I think you're right, that there are all these great organizations across the world. I mean, many of them I don't know about, but there is this growing social movement around food in a way that I haven't seen or read about in quite this way. I think there is, because of what happened during 2007 and 2008 and then again in 2011 with the food and financial crisis, I think there was this growing sort of, they're kind of like two sides, right? There was like the agras, the allies for a green revolution in Africa, which was really pushing for big farms and more use of inputs. And then there was this other side, this move towards sustainable, what you called regenerative practices. And there's not a lot in the middle, right? And I do think there is an opportunity for those farmers and farms in the middle who may not have transitioned totally to organic, but are still not on the real industrial side. I think there's an opportunity in the middle too for understanding that you can do things more sustainably, but still use artificial fertilizer if you do it responsibly, or still use some kinds of chemicals again responsibly. I think what we've lost in the world is this, what happened with the green revolution after World War II is that there was the development of these chemicals that were supposed to be like medicine, right? They were supposed to be like, they're supposed to help farmers get over a hump, right? So if your soil was degraded, you're gonna use this fertilizer for a short amount of time, or you're gonna use this herbicide until you figure out how to handle this problem. And now what farmers have been encouraged to do is use them like all the time, no matter what, like you just apply them because it's part of the process. And so I think we need to understand that it doesn't have to be either industrial farming or organic farming, that you can do something in the middle where those things are used again, like medicine. When your soil's sick, you do this, and then your soil gets better because you've used compost and or manure and organic matter to supplement it as well. So I'm not really answering your question. I do think there are these movements on other sides, but what we're forgetting about is that that farming sector in the middle that is not either or that it is trying to do things the right way, but not fully industrial and not fully organic. And that's okay. Like we need to support those farms and farmers as well. Do you see that we need to transition away from those or that we need to find a balance or we need to maintain that balance in the long term or how do you see us moving on the right side of history or attaining this that we've been talking about a lot in whether it's a UN food system summit or any other reports or discussions, kind of this reformation of food or the change of our food systems out of the industrial kind of ag sector, even though that's the biggest part. I mean, the rest is very small compared to that. I mean, again, I try to be this hopeful person, right? Optimistic, I think the industrial model will be forced to change not because it wants to but because of the climate crisis and fuel prices will become unsustainable that those practices will no longer be available because they're simply too expensive. They're simply too resource intensive. And you mentioned the work around true cost accounting with the tea bag of food earlier. I mean, we're still trying to figure out the true cost of our food. And if that were part of what economists, especially agricultural economists and my husband and I debate this a lot, we're using to define what these practices actually cost then we would go towards the more regenerative practices. We would go towards the more organic practices because the prices is better. The price for human health is better. The price for the environment is better. You know, the food is better. You might be paying more for it, you know, in some places, but you're not gonna pay for, you know, pollution and healthcare and all of those other things. So I think industrial models will change because they are forced to, not because people wanted them to change, no matter how much human I actually want them to change. It will just happen because of the situation we've put ourselves in with the multiple crises that I described before. We are in such a terrible situation on planet Earth right now. Planet Earth will survive, but humans might not because of what we've done, right? And so we have this opportunity that we can take, but I think, you know, for industrial farming to actually go away, it will be because it's forced to. I'm glad you mentioned that. So now I, two things. I, in our last, in our last meetings, last time we saw each other was in Israel at a left farm. I get the sense that there's, you truly believe on the regenerative front and some of the practices, but it's become a buzzword, regeneration. I mean, even though you help contribute to Paul Hawkins book, Regeneration, kind of helped him get the right people lined up in things. How is your feeling of that? And how has this, actually a very old practice, very old indigenous practice has been around before Leonardo da Vinci, it's kind of, I hate to say that we're being bastardized in some respects today, but how do you feel about that? And is that just a natural thing that we have to go through to come out on the right side and it'll work itself out? Or what are your thoughts or feelings? Maybe we can understand it better. Yeah, I mean, I go back and forth on this use of the term, you know, regenerative or, you know, and by the way, Paul Hawkins, one of the greatest honors of my life to be an advisor on that book. I don't know why, I don't even know why, how he knows my name. So, always been very good to me. Everybody knows your name. Such a, I mean, and he's really helped, you know, put agriculture at the forefront as a solution to the climate crisis. I mean, people were talking before, you know, Project Drawdown and Drawdown came out, you know, a lot of folks, I mean, you and I understood. But like, a lot of folks didn't look at agriculture as a solution to the climate crisis. And I think, you know, that his work has really helped push that forward. But, you know, you and I talked about regenerative and how it irritates me because I do think it takes away and minimizes the practices that have been done by, you know, for, you know, generation after generation by indigenous folks all over the world and native folks all over the world. And so, you know, I know there are lots of people who think, well, you know, it's okay. And I've, you know, they'll say, well, I've talked to indigenous people who don't mind, you know, that we're using that word. Well, you know, I've also talked to indigenous folks who do mind that white people like me use that word. And, you know, I think there needs to be a better understanding and a better honor, better honoring and respecting of those practices and knowing where they came from and knowing that in so many ways, we as white folks are co-opting them. We are, you know, and we did this with organic though too, right? Yeah. These are practices that were, you know, where it's always like white people just discovered these things, you know what I mean? And they've been around for millennia. So I think that's what bothers me. I don't know how it will play itself out. I think, you know, as you said, regenerative, like organic, like sustainable is already been co-opted, you know, by big companies and others. And everyone is, you know, either trying to say that they're doing regenerative practices. It's happening like with, you know, climate friendly or, you know, climate neutral products too. A lot of this is, again, well-intentioned. I think in addition to greenwashing, you know, of how we talk about things, there's also green wishing. They're really mission-driven companies who want to do things. They want it to do it the right way, but they haven't quite got there yet. And so they're green wishing, you know, for their products to be something that they're not yet. And so we just need to be aware of that. And I think that there's, you know, this is where it comes to people like you and me and so many activists and advocates. We just need more education and awareness around these issues. People know so little about food. You know, I think the people who probably listened to your podcast, you know, know a lot about the things that you've helped make them aware of. But so many people just don't know about where food comes from because they've just never had the opportunity to learn about it, right? You know, they've lived in cities or they've just never had that or they've grown up around corn and soybeans like I did, you know, and I didn't really understand what the farmers around me were doing because as far as I was concerned, they weren't growing food. They were just growing livestock feed. So I just think, you know, we need more awareness building. We need more education around these terms. So people truly understand them. And you know, the private sector really has to be involved in that. They have to be more transparent about what they're actually doing. And you know, hopefully, I am hopeful about that because, you know, Mark, and maybe we've talked about this before too, if you'd asked me 10 or now, maybe not 10 years, but 15 years ago, if I would be talking to companies and corporations or be involved in on sustainability boards for different companies, I would have said, oh my God, no. And I'm sure my 15 year old self is kicking, you know, looking at me right now and saying, oh my God, you've sold out. But I do think that we need the private sector at the table in this because they are so big. Even, you know, the smaller companies is just the private sector as a whole is so big. They need to be talking about these things. Food businesses need to be, you know, held accountable. And I think it's people like you and me who can help hold them accountable because we understand they're really powerful, but we understand that we can also, you know, sway how they do things. And that's where a lot of this power lies, right? How we can sway companies to do different things, how we can encourage them to use different terms and that kind of thing. I totally agree. And I believe that we're at this true point in history where we're at the meeting of the S curves where we're at a point of disruption of food. And although there are some really major big players out there who've taken our food system down the wrong path, the majority of food producers are small holders and small medium sized farms and food producers. And if we can unify them in a movement or to get on the same page on better practices or models of producing food without the help of large chemical companies or food companies in a commodity type of a way, I really think that that power lies within them to make some huge changes and disruptions in our food systems. Some of those we're already seeing, we're kind of seeing the cusp of that already with alternate proteins, you know, the future of meats and different things that we're doing it in a much different way and we need more organizations that are really concerned about the sustainability and the health factors upfront before they have developed a product in the end. One other person that is in some other reports, I mean, there's obviously the Rodeo Institute, which is a fabulous about organics and about regenerative ag practices and some different things up there, but more and more studies are coming out showing that regenerative, no-till, different types of farming food practices are actually just as productive, if not more, better for the environment, better for health, food and nutrition and return soils, water runoff, water retention, you know, growing topsoil over the years, then industrial ag or traditional conventional farming practices and there's Peter Bick is a filmmaker of the carbonation and he's doing a series of films that actually goes through, you know, these side-by-side comparisons. I always have to laugh because why are we still, you know, looking for the chat, the graphs, the charts, the reports and the studies? I mean, we've been doing this so long, but it's like we almost need this proof, you know, is it better to work with nature? Is it better not to put chemicals and all these other practices than the conventional ways? And so there's some really things that I'm also hopeful of that are coming out that are also better stories. They're shown in videos and movies and films that make a little bit more sense. It's kind of like the Kiss the Ground, you know, which was a big move in soils and things. And so I'm hopeful with those type of movements around these terms of regen and food production. Now, having said that, we are, or at least I was pretty hopeful when the Eat Lancet report was coming out, when the UN Food System Summit was coming out and like, okay, now we've got this seat at the table, we're gonna talk about food. And then what happened is we were hit with a pandemic. And you have more stories about this than ever, I'm sure that during this time, food really was a dual-edged sword in many respects. It was the biggest area that suffered in gastronomy and food delivery. And production and food waste and many others. But it was also the biggest sector to grow because it's an essential service. I mean, there was more investments in food companies than ever before, more companies emerging to solve the problem than ever before. How do you feel that's a transition that we had to go through, whether it was the pandemic or economic downturn or now this Ukraine war, that to realize that food as a commodity, food not as a basic right, is just a setup no matter where you're at in the world for disaster? And what are your thoughts and feelings? Are we learning those lessons to pull that system into the right direction? Listen, I had hoped that the pandemic silver lining would be that people would understand food and agriculture much better, that they would understand the people behind their food, not just farmers, but food service workers and not chefs, but food service workers, truck drivers, grocery store workers, et cetera. And I saw that sort of at the very beginning, there was a lot of momentum around, especially around restaurant workers and because restaurants were closing and there weren't protections for restaurant workers, especially those who were either recent immigrants or undocumented here in the United States, they really suffered a lot. And I was hoping that this is finally, like we're gonna, we are going to understand the people behind food. And I think we've lost that now. I think people have very short memories about the early days of the pandemic and empty grocery store shelves, which we're seeing again. There's still a lot of supply chain disruptions happening. I thought we would be more empathetic to folks like delivery drivers and just again understanding our food system a little bit better. And I wrote about that. We had a food tank had a piece in agriculture and human values and journal about that. And things that I was sort of seeing and hearing from food tank kept going during the pandemic. We did live stream interviews like twice a day with experts from all over the world. Everyone from like Maximo Terraro, who is the chief economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to like farmer's market managers in places like Minneapolis here in the United States. Just getting, and everyone between farmers in Kenya and you're just getting a sort of a take on what was happening around the globe. And I had just, as scary as that time was, I still keep writing 2020 on checks because I can't believe that time has moved on. As scary as that all was, I did have this incredible hope that we would understand food, everyone would get it. And we would finally sort of, okay, everyone's gonna rally around, farmers and food system workers and things are gonna change and they're not. Companies like, big companies made bank during the pandemic because people were hoarding and people were eating comfort foods, like Tyson's and made a lot of money. And then when the executive order to keep meat processing plants open came down from the Trump administration while people were dying working in processing plants, processing plants were giving bonuses to people who, if they came in, so people were coming into work sick and then dying. And it was, that tragedy is still unfathomable to me. And so I've heard the same from Starbucks workers who were still forced to go to work even if they didn't feel good or they'd lose their jobs. And so you see what I am hopeful about and what has come out of the pandemic, maybe this is the thing that if I can find hope in is that fast food workers are organizing, grocery stores are organizing into unions, the Starbucks workers in places like Memphis and Buffalo, New York are not putting up with this and excuse me, but like this bullshit anymore. They've been treated so poorly. So there is a greater organizing effort. So hopefully that will help us as eaters understand the price, the actual price that food workers pay when they go to serve us. And then you mentioned the Russian aggression against Ukraine with the Russian war against Ukraine. And I also thought that would sort of make people realize, I don't think it's gonna happen until next year when bread prices soar, when people can't find canola oil, when I think that's gonna happen July, June and July of next year when people really see the impact of what this war has done. And I'm not encouraging people to go out and stock up on canola or whatever, or sunflowers, please don't hoard. But like we're gonna see those impacts later on. And so I think people just don't care right now. They'll care when it's oil prices, cooking oil prices are so high or their bread prices are so high. But right now it's just not affecting them. It's something that's happening. So we're so far removed from it. Maybe not in Europe where you live but it's certainly- It's two degrees. I think it's only about two degrees of separation in the US but it is right close home here in Europe. And I'm in Germany, I mean, just in the last three months I went to the barber about three months ago and beforehand it was like nine o'clock in the morning I went into a bakery and I walked in and I was like, oh you're already all sold out for today and the lady said, no, it's like this. We're thinking about a new model for business or going out of business because we can't get any delivery. So all our wheat flour and oils come from the Ukraine to make bread and they didn't have any bread. And then just last week I went into a totally separate bakery and same thing that there was nothing in there. They just were apologizing in advance. It says it has to do with Ukraine. And you mentioned it as well. It's not just the bread. Now October Fest here in Germany is coming up and they're having a beer shortage. There's no carbonation for the beer. There's no wheat and grains to barling hops to do that because a lot of it comes from the Ukraine, believe it or not. And so not only is it gonna be a tough winner because of gas and the fossil fuels that Germany and Europe uses from Russia, but it's going to be tough because now bread and the basics for German's beer is being effective. So hopefully they'll realize that food as a commodity is cheapens life and it really puts humanity in a bad place in a bad position. And it's exploitive of the Ukraine as well. So we can take their commodities and charge them just very cheap, cheapen food and not pay them the true cost or the fair value which we were talking about, the true cost report of the TIB reports and documents. But then when times are tough and war or conflict comes around, then we don't realize that we've kind of pushed them into that situation. We've created that situation and alls we can do is complain because the essential services, the energy or the food is no longer there. And I think that short-term vision or that forgetting of what happened to the food workers, what happened when there was no, nothing being delivered in those lockdowns, that is not how our world works and that short termism, that short-sightedness I think really needs to be changed. That says something I don't know how much you're hearing in discussions or you're working on, but I really would love to see globally our food systems get out of the commodities area where we're no longer training it like an investment because it's our basic human need and it can't be traded like a commodity. Absolutely. I think you also brought up two other really good points. One is that we need more regionalized and localized food systems, right? So that Germany is not so dependent on Ukraine, that the United States is not so dependent on Ukraine and that Ukraine could feed itself. I mean, it's gonna have a hard time next year. That country is going to, it's having a hard time now. Farmers are literally on the front lines of a war, right? And trying to farm and fight for their country, right? So, we need those regionalized food systems so that we're not so dependent on other parts of the world. And at the same time, you see food being used as a weapon food and fuel being used as a weapon. Putin has become an expert at that, right? And with the blockade and thankfully that's now more, wheat is getting out of Ukraine and hopefully other things too. But that kind of warfare is disgusting. And it is because food is a commodity that we don't have a universal right to food. And if those things were in place, then we wouldn't see what we're seeing now. So it is, it's a tragedy on so many different levels. But there are solutions, right? And you talked about some of them and I really do think there is now this movement. And again, this is something I hoped that the pandemic had pointed out very clearly that with disruptions in the supply chain and honestly truck drivers quitting all over the world because they just, it's, you know, it's, sorry, it's like not a great job and it was especially was a great job during the pandemic. And so you, if we had more regionalized and localized food systems, if we weren't so dependent on the other parts of our own countries or other parts of the world for food, then, you know, we'd be in a different situation. During the pandemic, you saw a lot of people calling for bringing back local canneries, you know, local tineries, you know, local mills and for making bread and those kinds of things. The, right now the United States doesn't have that kind of infrastructure. You know, Europe, I think in some ways is better equipped to do that kind of thing because it didn't completely lose, you know, that sort of, you know, sort of more local connection to food. But we really need to invest in the infrastructure that would make it possible for us to regionalize our food systems. But right now, you know, and earlier we talked about the Farm Bill, I don't think that'll be in the, you know, the 2023 Farm Bill in any, you know, sort of concrete way. And that's, we're missing opportunities like and keep missing them. It's like opportunity after opportunity is lost here. It's not just an opportunity. It's also we're building, it would be a form of resilience, a prevention to build resilience into the system. So we know, even if we're not talking food, our world is the most volatile point in time in history that's ever been climate change, climate refugees, displacement, disruption, Brexit, Ukraine, all sorts of craziness going on in the world. We know about that, economic issues. And so why can't we build some infrastructure, some resilience into the system that we know those things are coming so that when the hard time comes, we'll be able to weather those storms or those rough times a little bit better during that time. I think that that would be so vital. I love that you bring that up. I mean, there's one other aspect in that, not only as some of our supply chains and driving food in refrigerated trucking around the world a big thing, but what we saw here in Europe with Brexit, five times the landmass of the United Kingdom is used around the world to produce food for the United Kingdom. With the Brexit, the COVID, the lockdown, we've really seen huge areas of food disruption and security and issues for the United Kingdom occur. But all those truck drivers who were driving food from France and through the channel into the United Kingdom, they couldn't go one because of Brexit and two because of the lockdown. And so there were some major, major issues, but those people needed jobs. So now they found jobs somewhere else with a little bit of security and they don't wanna go back to those jobs anymore. And now we've had God rest her soul, the Queen passed away and we now have King Charles, but there's some things that we're maybe not seeing or understanding that could come. I think it's more than 28 different colonies or areas around the world that are part of the United Kingdom which are delivering food and things. This is an opportunity for those areas to say, we don't wanna be a colony anymore, we wanna change it. Who knows what kind of disruption or thing could happen there? I'm not trying to do any predictions or forecasting, but we just don't have a very stable system with some of the politics and the decisions we made long-term. And so coming from farming, coming from those areas, I just don't see how can we plan on those future harvests? How can we plan on how we're gonna build our crops and do our harvest and prepare and be in that mindset? What does that future look like? Where are we going? And that really leads me to the hardest question I have for you today. And yeah, it's probably the hardest. I'm sure you'll do just fine. I'm sure you'll do just fine. It's the burning question. What does a world that works for everyone look like for you, Danny? What does a world that works for everyone look like for you? Such a good question and you're right, it is a difficult question to answer. Like, you know, it's a world that's, you know, that focuses and puts importance on equity and equality and justice, especially food justice. It's a world that doesn't, as you said before, look at food as the commodity that it looks at food as a universal human right. It's a world that focuses on human rights because we don't now. It's a world where women and youth are valued and not dismissed. It's a world where, you know, lived experiences are just as important and honored as PhDs. It's a world where things are more fair. And, you know, we are not even close to getting there, you know, we have seen so much disruption, not just because of the pandemic, but because of, you know, so many things, the food and financial crisis that happened several years ago, the, you know, the racial disparity and uprisings that have happened in the United States and in other places in the world and we're much needed and continue to be much needed. We've, you know, there's so many problems that we face and but, you know, it goes back to what we talked about before. If we look at the food system, the food system can solve so many of the things that we're seeing, right? You know, whether it's the climate crisis or whether it's protecting biodiversity or whether it's improving that equity and equality that I talked about, the food and agriculture could be the central sort of point for all that. So, you know, the world I wanna see, right? Maybe it's not as far away as I sort of think of it right now. Maybe it's the world my stepchildren will have, right? Who are 13 and nine or maybe, you know, maybe their kids will see it. But I do think there is this movement where people are fed up, right? They don't want this world that we now live in. They want something different and something better and they are no longer, you know, you talked about the 28 colonies that are under British, still under, you know, British rule. And as much as I admire, I was gonna call in Prince Charles King Charles's focus on food and agriculture and, you know, throughout his lifetime. He got his book here on me, yeah. You know, I've met him, right? And he's very sincere about his viewpoints on food and agriculture. But, you know, there will be disruptions. Those colonies need to be, you know, they need to be independent. And I, you know, I shouldn't say need to be, but if I were one of the people who lived in one of those places, I would certainly still, you know, want to have that sort of rule lifted. Anyway, I do think that, you know, we, the change is coming, right? And we can either, you know, be part of it, right? And help it along in a way that is nonviolent and peaceful or, you know, it won't be, right? And I think, again, we have an opportunity for change here, but it's only if we all sort of get on board. And, you know, I think that maybe it's, you know, we talked about like how the pandemic didn't bring us together, how the war in Ukraine is not bringing us together. Maybe it will be the climate crisis that brings us together because we, again, we're forced to. It's like those companies I talked about before, they're gonna be forced to change because of the climate crisis. Maybe the climate crisis will force us all to change because it will be so prevalent. It will be so much, it already is a part of our daily lives. We don't always see it, but it will be so significant that we will be forced to come together and make actual change. I truly hope so. And it's, you know, I'm on the same way King Charles's book, Harmony and his thoughts there. And that I, what we're coming back to, whether we've discussed it blatantly in this conversation or not, it's really these local economies, local food security that we're really not relying on food as a commodity from elsewhere. If there are colonies of the United Nations, if there are food producers for the US or for Germany that are elsewhere around the world, I think that globalization or that trade of food should only come after the local economies are taking care of the local areas who are those food producers are really doing a good job and taking care of their own area. I mean, I think that in the situation with Ukraine, I'm not quite sure that they were always meeting their needs first before they were thinking about all the food that they would deliver to Germany or elsewhere around the world. And I think that's a real core, not only for jobs, not only for true cost, but also a tendency to fix that problem. My vision is very similar to yours as well on that. I have a few more questions before we wrap it up. And really, so next week you'll be heading off to New York Climate Week, maybe even this weekend as early to get there in advance, you're closer than I am. And then we have COP 27 in Shalman Shake, Egypt, and you're involved in things there. And so I'm basically asking you, what's coming down the road? What's food tank? What are you working on? What are some things that we should be watching for and hearing about? And is there any more hopeful things that you're kind of really excited about that are coming up? So I'm doing much less during Climate Week than you are. And you're right, I have a train ride. You have a probably a couple of plane rides to get there. But the thing I'm focused on in Climate Week, I'm working with Mark Kaplan of Invisible and Whole Chain. He's a blockchain expert. And he's one of these people who I think he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And he's very thoughtful about these things. And he's one of those people who like, he worked for Unilever for a long time, but now is really focused on changing the food system in creative ways through blockchain and through different kinds of technology that create transparency and traceability in our food systems. He's working with the UN Global Compact Accelerator to put on a dinner that I will be emceeing next week with a lot of different business leaders and others who, it'll be a working dinner to really come up with concrete ways of making solutions. And there will be some really exciting announcements made that I can't share with you from really big food companies. So it's kind of an exciting thing to be involved in. And I love working with Mark and because of his focus on really making sure that food systems are not just transparent and traceable, but they have more justice. He's been really involved in seafood traceability. And why that's so important is because the seafood supply chain is very corrupt. It's full of companies lying about kind of where their seafood comes from and actually what the seafood is. They claim one fish is a different kind of fish, all of that kind of thing. What Mark's doing is eliminating that and it's helping eliminate slavery in the seafood industry. It's helping fishers get the actual true cost of what they're producing and what they're catching. So it's really, really, I think a game-changing thing what he's doing. So it's very exciting to just watch him kind of do his thing and be able to observe it because I do think he's one of those people who's gonna change the world. And then with COP 27 coming up, food tank is involved. We have our little hands in almost every pavilion that is doing anything on food. And this is, as you know, Mark, this is the first time that there's not just one food system pavilion, but three at COP. This is game-changing. Last year at COP 26, there were lots of discussions around food, but they were just sort of, happening in the blue zone, that's great, but there were not whole pavilions focused exclusively on food. WWF at the Pandavillian had its own discussions about food, but they're focused on other things. And there was a lot of public zone events that were focused on food, but having these three and probably four, it looks like there might be four food system pavilions is really exciting. So there's a few kinds of food. They're hugeer than the other pavilions. That's such a big thing. I'm so excited. It's so crazy. Yeah, it's awesome. So Climey, we're working with them and with Aleph Farms to have a day, two days devoted to creating more resiliency in our food systems and also sort of creating better value chains. And then for food for climate, we're focused on food loss and food waste. And gender and gender empowerment. So that's really exciting. It looks like I'll be moderating some sessions at the WWF pavilion. And it looks like we'll be involved in the food and agriculture organization of the United States pavilion. So we're just really excited about what's coming up. And I hope, you know, I know I'll be interacting with you and some other people I admire. So it's just really this great opportunity. What I hope is that the delegates, the people who are making the decisions, the decision, you know, the policy makers who will be there, really listen that they see the power that food has, that they see that, you know, this is not just about energy, which we need more focus on and we need more renewable ways of supplying energy. But we also need to transition our food systems in concrete ways. So it's a really exciting time. And folks can go to foodtank.com to find out more about what we're doing. I love that. I mean, we didn't really touch too much on innovation, but we over the years have been involved in some pretty progressive innovative companies, what you're talking about as well as Mark and involving blockchain and those things and the seafood industry. There's some pretty groundbreaking forward-moving thinking things. The problem is, this is a new 50 years hence, Winston Churchill was talking about the future of foods and alternate proteins and different ways of growing food. And actually the first discussion was 113 years ago where they were talking about those type of things. The problem is, is we didn't pave policy in the roadmap for scale and to roll out once those innovations were developed. You and I are involved in a couple of companies that have come up with these great innovations and the product and the sustainability is fabulous, but now they've become policymakers and lawmakers and labeling and for approvals, they've now got to change that industry because that industry or that governance was still stuck in the dark ages, basically, on how to produce food, how should it be there and it's kind of more reactionary. Let's wait until the innovation comes up and then we'll think about the policy or paving the roadmap. And I think that's something that we did talk in our discussion today. Let's not wait till the problem comes. Let's create policy, bills and actions in advance. We know the future is probably gonna be a little volatile and let's get those policies and things in place now instead of requiring those innovators or those new food producers to also pave that roadmap as well as conquer the other challenges that we have. The last two questions I have for you is really, if there was one message that you could depart to our listeners as a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life, what would it be, your message? Even if it's two messages, that's fine. The power to change their life, right? Your questions are so easy, Mark. This is... You know, as you know, throughout my career, I've had this focus on the need for investing in women, especially women farmers. So I think my message would be to honor and respect the role of women in our food systems because if we do that, if women get the same financial resources, the same land access, the same educational opportunities as men, they could lift millions of people out of hunger. And I think we are still not valuing women in our food systems as much as we should. So I would ask your listeners to really think about that, the importance of gender equity. We've talked about all the realms of equity, but for me, having the opportunity to talk to hundreds of women farmers in the United States and Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, I've learned so much from them and I hope that others can value them as much as I do. I think that would be a game changer if we invested in women in the same way we invest in sort of their male counterparts. I love that. I think it was back in 2018 at the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition. And I've been saying it a lot, which is I get some looks and questions. So the top four ways to draw down our global warming are all have to do with food. The first is global food systems reformation, but the two that are most important is empowering girls and empowering women. And that's a very diverse and broad area, but most people don't realize how impactful that could be. And it's in that project drawdown that we talked about Paul Hawking. You know, it has the power to reduce not just greenhouse gas emissions to feed families and lives and enrich humanity better but also to bring up to 75% impact in our world today now if we realize that and so that's also, it will be my message and I'll make sure that that gets spread around there. I really appreciate you bringing that up because it's so vital. The last question is what have you experienced or learned in your journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start? Oh God, you know, I feel like I spent most of my life like just being a student, right? Like, you know, and before FooTank started, I wish I had, now I have them because I had to, right? I wish I'd had more business skills and like development skills. You know, when FooTank first started, I was really bad at fundraising. Now I'm really, I mean, for the most part, I'm really a lot better at it. So I think having those skills in place that like I think what we need, the next generation of food system advocates to have is business skills and not just like the education that we have. We need practical skills too. We need to know how to talk to different kinds of people who don't speak our language and often that's people like accountants or funders and others who don't always have the same sort of vision that we have. So yeah, I wish somebody had told me like, hey, take an accounting class. Yeah, and I can so appreciate that. I, and you kind of give the answer a lot and we both give the answer a lot. We always talk food systems or we talk systemic or systems. Well, the business aspect, the accounting, the economics of that, that's a, yeah, you've got the media or you've got the innovation but you've also gotta cover all the supply chain, the resources, that whole thing. And so that's really that business part that a lot of people are like, I just wanna be a farmer but I don't wanna deal about the bookkeeping, the harvest and well, that's not a system. That's not something that's gonna be very successful. So the best advice, you're giving us the greatest advice. Danny, thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas. It's been a sheer pleasure. That's all I have for you today unless there's something else you didn't get a say and you wanna say before I say goodbye. Mark, I've talked so much. It's been so great to see you and talk to you. Thank you for everything. You've done a lot for me throughout my career and I really appreciate you and what you give to the world. And so you are well respected, my friend and I appreciate so much about you. You're an angel because I feel the total opposite. I think you've done more for me than I've done for you. I don't see it the same but thank you so much. I have to thank you as well. You've been a sheer blessing in my life for just knowing you and reading your work and following Food Tank. It's been a sheer pleasure. Thank you so much, Danny. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye. You too. Take care, Mark. Bye.