On February 12th, 2011, local and international food and agriculture experts gathered at theTEDxManhattan event in New York City. This locally organized event dedicated to “ideas worth spreading” was themed “Changing the Way We Eat.” Along with speakers Laurie David, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, and others, Nourishing the Planet Co-Director Brian Halweil was featured at the event.
In college, Brian was on track to become a doctor, he said, when he heard a lecture by ecologist Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich claimed that agriculture is the single biggest way humans touch the planet. Deciding he could help more people by focusing on the food system than by becoming even the most prolific doctor, Brian went to work for the Worldwatch Institute.
Initially depressed by his research into the prevalence of factory farms, pesticides, over-fishing, hunger and obesity, Brian eventually wrote Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket, a book about the local food movement. Previously, Brian hadn’t felt that his work was having an impact. “I realized what does change minds, what does inspire people to change their behavior, are the glimmers of hope that often show up on the margins.” By focusing on small, local initiatives, he began to see food as the antidote to many of the world’s biggest problems.
“Food is emerging as the solution to our most daunting problems right here in New York, and half way across the world in Africa, where hunger and poverty are most entrenched,” Brian said. Citizen oyster growers on Long Island’s East End collectively seed millions of pollution-fighting oysters in the region each year, according to Brian. At the same time, millions of African farmers fertilize their fields by planting indigenous nitrogen-fixing trees in the margins of their fields. These trees not only nurture the soil, provide animal feed and bedding, fuel, and protection from harsh winds, Brian explained, but the benefits also extend globally. “African farmers planting trees in their field could remove 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year,” Brian said.
Other examples of food as a solution that Brian cited include farming in cities across Africa and the expansion of CSAs and the Green Carts programs in New York City. These efforts bring produce to communities that were lacking it, and simultaneously create new jobs. Edible schoolyards in Eastern Long Island as well as school meal programs in Africa are teaching children about local, nutritious foods, and introducing it into their diets.
“This is what it looks like when food solves problems…And we should expect no less from what we eat and grow,” Brian said.
By Alana Herro
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
