This week, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) announced the selection of the 14 grassroots advocates, thought leaders, writers and entrepreneurs who will make up this year’s class of Food and Community Fellows. The Food and Community Fellows program, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Woodcock Foundation, is designed to help provide support and guidance for outstanding leaders in the food and agriculture community who are working to improve the food system on the local and international level.
Selected from over 500 applicants, the 14 fellows represent diverse perspectives and backgrounds, but they all share at least one quality: a desire to create a food system that provides healthy options for all, especially children. The new class includes Don Bustos, a traditional farmer with more than twenty years of experience working at the grassroots level to address land and water rights issues in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cheryl Danley, an Academic Specialist who helps communities strengthen access to fresh, locally grown and affordable foods in East Lansing, Michigan; and Jenga Mweno, an urban agriculture community organizer in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and founder of the Backyard Gardeners Network—a non-profit that uses urban agriculture to empower communities and preserve traditions.
“The selection process demonstrates that this country has a cadre of profoundly dedicated individuals committed to better food in their communities and improved food policies in all levels of government,” says Keecha Harris, a food systems and public health expert, member of the first fellowship class, and member of the selection committee.
“The Food and Community Fellows have always been change agents,” says Jim Harkness, President of IATP.” We invest in individuals that have a vision and plan for bettering the food system. These fellowships aren’t about incremental change; we want big visions that have the potential to provide our children with new opportunities for growing, processing, eating and thinking about food.”
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.
