This is how we make food systems work for everyone

If you want to know why our food systems are broken and what we need to do to fix them then one of the best people to speak to is my recent guest on Inside Ideas, Danielle Nierenberg.

A truly world-renowned expert speaker and advocate for transforming food systems and agriculture, Danielle is President of Food Tank, a non-profit she founded with Bernard Pollack that is delivering real change by building a global community of safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Food Tank also showcases the innovative solutions reshaping our food systems: through its original daily publications, research articles, a chart-topping podcast, interviews, and events and summits in major cities around the world.

Danielle has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world, and innovations in sustainable agriculture. She says there is no lack of information out there explaining the need for change but insists something is being lost in translation, with political leaders too focused on the demands of election cycles than the need for systemic change.

“The reports and books are not being listened to, we need more and better storytelling, otherwise the messages will fall flat,” she says. “We also need more political will to implement changes, as we have a lot of corporate interference and control of our food systems, with too much control in the hands of too few.”

With the support of the more than 250 plus major institutional partners, including The Rockefeller Foundation, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Oxfam America, Slow Food USA, U.N. FAO and the Sustainable Food Trust, Food Tank is getting on with the business of fixing broken food systems. Which Danielle says would be much easier to do if women were given fair access to resources.

“We need to respect the role of women in our food systems because if we do that, if they get the same financial resources, the same land access, the same educational opportunities as men, they could lift millions of people out of hunger. I think it would be a game changer if we invested in women.”

The future of food will shape the future of people and the planet. With the choices we make today critical to how the story unfolds. Danielle is one of the leading experts impacting the narrative and I am delighted to revisit the show to get her take on what the upcoming chapters might look like.