A3. Agroecology

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Food labels provide information about food products and their contents. Most identify the product and list its ingredients and net quantity. Labeling requirements generally apply to packaged and prepared foods, although the information required—and how manufacturers must present it—varies across countries and food categories.

Food labeling has expanded beyond identifying a package’s contents. Today, labels communicate information about nutrition, allergens, food safety, preparation and storage, production practices, and other product characteristics.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identifies nutritional information as a central feature of food labels. Nutrition labels typically provide a product’s energy content and levels of nutrients including carbohydrates, protein, fat, sugars, sodium, vitamins, and minerals, typically reported per serving or specified quantity.

Labels also communicate food safety information. Allergen disclosures identify ingredients that may trigger reactions, while storage, preparation, and handling instructions help consumers use foods safely. Date markings such as ‘sell by’ and ‘best before’ can provide information about a product’s safety or quality over time. But date labeling can also be confusing to consumers, leading to safe food going to waste.

According to the European Commission and the FDA, food labels are intended to help consumers make informed choices by explaining what a product contains and allowing them to assess dietary needs and compare products.

They aim to provide clear comprehensible information to enable efficient decision-making at the point of sale, describes the World Health Organization (WHO). Data from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that the majority of in-store shoppers spend an average of 13 seconds evaluating a brand before purchasing, with most decisions taking less than 10 seconds.

Food-labeling requirements vary globally. Research published in Frontiers in Public Health has identified mandatory nutrient-declaration policies for processed foods in at least 95 countries, with differing requirements for front-of-package labels and health and nutrition claims.

The FAO and WHO develop international standards through the Codex Alimentarius Commission, including baseline principles for labeling prepackaged foods that can inform national regulations.

In the United States, the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) share primary responsibility for food labeling. Federal regulation dates to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which targeted adulterated and misbranded foods. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 expanded labeling requirements, while the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 established mandatory nutrition labeling for most FDA-regulated foods.

The European Union takes a more centralized approach, establishing common labeling requirements across its member states. The United Kingdom’s voluntary ‘traffic light’ system uses green, amber, and red to identify nutrient levels, while Chile requires black, octagonal ‘high in’ warnings on products exceeding thresholds for calories, sugar, sodium, or saturated fat.

As food labels communicate more information, they can also become more difficult to interpret. Consumers must navigate nutrition and ingredient information alongside claims, certifications, warnings, and other disclosures, making relevant information harder to identify and understand.

Government labeling resources often target producers and use technical language that consumers may struggle to interpret, Laurie Beyranevand, Director of Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems and Professor of Law, tells Food Tank.

And because the pages contain technical jargon, consumers may not always understand what they read.

A study published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior finds that 89 percent of respondents believed they understood date labels, but just 24 percent correctly identified their meaning.

“I think there are real trust issues with our food supply. Having access to information and having clarification of what those things mean is really important,” Dr. Roni Neff, Professor at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future, tells Food Tank.

Confusion around date labels can also contribute to food waste. A European Commission study estimated that confusion and other practices surrounding date marking contribute to approximately 10 percent of food waste in the EU. Consumers may discard food that remains safe to eat after misinterpreting ‘best by,’ ‘sell by,’ or ‘use by’ dates.”

Public health organizations increasingly identify food labels as a potential policy tool. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies nutrition labeling as one approach to helping consumers make healthier food choices, while UNICEF reports growing evidence that nutrition labels can improve consumers’ understanding of nutritional quality.

But labels can only serve that purpose if consumers can understand and use the information they provide. WHO recommends that front-of-package labels present nutrition information in a convenient and readily understood format, while the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) emphasizes the need for clear, reliable labeling as global food supply chains increase the distance between consumers and producers. For policymakers, Beyranevand says, that means prioritizing accessibility and comprehensibility when developing labeling requirements.

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The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is pleased to release its 2025–2026 Annual Report, documenting a year of collective action to advance agroecology, defend farmers’ rights and strengthen community-led food systems. Covering 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, the report marks the first year of implementation of AFSA’s 2025–2029 Strategic Framework. It brings together achievements, experiences and lessons from an alliance of 48 member organisations, showing how local knowledge and community leadership inform action from farmers’ fields to national, regional and global policy spaces.

The report highlights efforts to protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seeds, advance agroecology in climate policy, celebrate African food cultures and strengthen local economies. Key developments include the Seed Is Life and My Food Is African campaigns, Healthy Soil Healthy Food work across six countries, and support for 222 agroecological enterprises and 21 territorial markets. Member stories bring these achievements to life: young farmers and women restoring land and water systems in Zambia, communities expanding farmer-led agroecology across West Africa, and farmers in Malawi rebuilding soil fertility and improving maize harvests through locally produced organic manure. Together, these experiences demonstrate the practical value of African-led solutions for livelihoods, resilience and food sovereignty.

Reflecting on the communities behind this work, AFSA Board Chairperson Rev. Dr. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr. writes: “Their experiences remind us that food sovereignty is not simply a policy aspiration; it is lived every day through the stewardship of land, seeds, biodiversity, livelihoods and human dignity.” General Coordinator Dr. Million Belay sets out the ambition guiding the alliance: “Our task is not only to respond to crisis, but to build power, alternatives and hope.”

Alongside these achievements, the report shares the challenges, institutional developments and lessons shaping AFSA’s next steps, including the need to translate policy commitments into implementation and sustain investment in community-led change. AFSA thanks its members, communities, partners, donors and allies for their commitment and invites policymakers, researchers, civil society and the wider public to explore and share the report.

Read the AFSA Annual Report 2025–2026

The food and agriculture sector employs 1.4 billion people—more than any other in the world. It’s also the most exploitative,  according to a new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). But stronger labor protections and worker-led movements can help build food systems that work for those who sustain them.

Roughly two out of every five people in the global workforce depend on food and farming systems for their livelihoods. But whether they are in a field, on a boat, in a processing facility, or a supermarket, many lack the protections they need to keep them safe.

Informal employment agreements, legal loopholes, and systemic discrimination make food systems workers some of the most vulnerable on the planet. The climate crisis, expanding gig economy, and corporate consolidation are adding new layers of uncertainty and risk.

“This report confirms what we’ve seen for many years: That there’s widespread exploitation throughout these systems,” says Susan Longley, a labor rights expert and External Advisor for IPES-Food.

The authors highlight a stark gender imbalance. One in three food systems workers makes below a living wage with women earning, on average, 50 percent of what men do. Women are also more likely to engage in unpaid care work, from cooking to cleaning, which makes up an estimated 12.5 billion combined hours of labor per day. This often prevents them from holding full-time jobs, resulting in lower wages and weaker protections.

“One of the things that is fairly central is our insistence that care be centered in the way that we think about food and food work,” says Raj Patel, a member of IPES-Food’s Expert Panel. “That means that we need to recognize care [and] we need to reduce the amount of it that is disproportionately on women’s shoulders.”

Migrant workers also face a uniquely precarious position. Despite the essential role they play in food and agriculture systems, they face “some of the highest rates of workplace abuse,” the report states.

The authors reveal that migrant workers are three times more likely to experience forced labor and they are 70 percent more likely to die on the job compared to the general population. They are also “routinely victims of wage theft,” says Olivier De Schutter, Co-Chair of IPES-Food’s Expert Panel. The International Labor Organization estimates that, collectively, migrant workers lose US$31 billion in underpaid wages every year.

The report makes clear that the exploitation experienced by food workers is no accident. It is built into the systems and structures that shape how food is produced, processed, prepared, distributed, and sold.

Patel sees efforts to upend these harmful power dynamics, but notes that “we are at the very early stages of the transformations that we need.”

Outlining 12 levers for change, the authors call for legislation that guarantees protections for workers, regardless of status, and demand accountability for employers guilty of labor abuses. And at the heart of solutions are the workers, who are empowered through stronger trade unions, collective bargaining, and broad cross-movement coalitions.

“The key to resolving a lot of these problems is through building worker power,” Longley says.

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In a new documentary, The Vegan Poultry Farmer, filmmaker Kadir van Lohuizen follows Ruud Zanders as he grapples with a moral dilemma: raising animals for food while following a vegan diet. Zanders travels the globe, meeting with food systems experts, to determine if an animal-free food system is possible.

“Personally, I would say: stop exploiting farm animals,” Zanders says in the documentary.

Zanders opened the first Kipster farm in the Netherlands in 2017 after his large-scale poultry operation went bankrupt. He realized that large-scale farms are efficient and produce cheap eggs, but “something else is paying the price… biodiversity, the climate, the animal itself,” he tells Food Tank.

His farming model, he says, is based on sustainability, animal welfare, and transparency. Zanders ultimately envisions an animal-free food system, but until that becomes a reality, he aims to provide the highest-welfare eggs possible. “It’s very complicated to produce eggs or other animal-based products in a really animal-friendly way,” Zanders says.

His farms house 24,000 chickens per barn, compared to industrial operations which can hold up to 350,000 per barn, according to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). The chickens receive indoor and outdoor space, fresh air and sunlight, and an enrichment playground to exercise their natural instincts.

Kipster is working to produce carbon neutral eggs by giving their chickens feed made from waste streams, including stale pastries or other food no longer fit for human consumption. This feed model eliminates competition for food (corn, grains, soy) between people and farm animals. Zanders bases this model on the idea that growing crops directly for human consumption can decrease agricultural land usage and allow for more land to be restored to natural ecosystems.

He was inspired to do this by Imke de Boer, a Wageningen University professor of livestock and sustainable food systems, as well as environmental activist and writer George Monbiot, who Zanders visits in the film. Monbiot tells him that livestock farming is the single most destructive human activity to the environment.

The farm also uses solar panels and transforms chicken litter into fertilizer. They report that a Kipster egg’s carbon footprint is about 23 percent lower than that of a conventional egg.

The documentary examines behind the scenes of Kipster farms and other operations to reveal the industry’s reality. It shows chickens being shoved into crates to be transported to slaughter, limp carcasses dangling on a conveyor belt, and workers wearing blood-spattered aprons. Even under Kipster’s higher-welfare standards, the end result is still the same.

Zanders meets with various stakeholders to help him answer the film’s driving question: Is an animal-free food system possible?

Melanie Jaecques, co-owner of a farm animal sanctuary in Belgium, saves chickens predominantly from the egg industry. She talks to Zanders about the complexity of chickens’ behavior and personalities, and that even on his higher-welfare farm, they are not given the proper environment to thrive. To her, housing 24,000 chickens in one barn is “terribly wrong,” and that Kipster is “not a good system, but the least bad.”

To answer his logistical questions about fertilizing crops without animal manure and whether people can maintain proper health on a vegan diet, he visits a human waste fertilizer producer in Ghana and a plant-based hematologist, respectively. Together, these experts affirm his belief in an animal-free agriculture system—which only intensifies his internal struggle as a poultry farmer.

Although Zanders concludes that it is possible to have an animal-free food system, he knows that his vision is not shared by all. As long as there is a demand for animal products, Zanders hopes that Kipster can help bridge the gap between his ideal vision and the current industrial system. That’s why he believes that he can positively impact farm animals as a poultry farmer. “We have to do our utmost best to give them a life worth living.”

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For southeast Iowa farmer Amos Graber, the path to healthier food begins in the soil.

“I firmly believe that if I have healthy soil, then I can raise healthier crops, which in turn will mean healthier livestock,” says Graber. “And then, really the end goal, all this is healthier food for the consumer.”

Graber is the seventh generation to farm his family’s land. Alongside his father, he raises cattle in partnership with specialty meat company Niman Ranch and grows a mix of non-GMO and organic crops, including corn, soybeans, oats, alfalfa, and clover hay.

At 25 years old, Graber is experimenting with new practices to continually improve the family farm. He feeds their cattle a mineral mix including yeast and essential oils, which support animal health without synthetic antibiotics, and applies a worm compost extract to corn and soybean fields to help boost nutrient absorption.

But Graber knows that building healthier soil and livestock does not happen overnight. He is focusing on improving his land, not just sustaining it, and that’s a long-term project.

“By going the natural route, focusing on the soil health, it’s a slow grind, but you’ll start seeing the rewards from it,” says Graber. “We’re not here to just be sustainable in the soil. We’re trying to make it better.”

For Graber, this means being willing to question conventional approaches and experiment with alternatives. He says farmers can feel pressure to follow the practices of those around them, even when those methods may not be working financially or environmentally.

“Some farmers, [they say], ‘Well, this is what my neighbor does, and that’s just the only thing we can do around here,'” says Graber. Instead, he tries to think beyond the status quo at Graber Farms, recognizing that there may be more than one way to make a farm successful.

In his area, it is typical for cattle to move between several separate, specialized operations: a cow-calf ranch from birth, a backgrounder farm for early life, a feedlot for later life, and finally a packing plant. But Graber Farms raises its herd for their entire lifetime, from calves to market, and Graber believes this reduces stress on the animals while allowing him greater control over the conditions in which they are raised.

Maintaining a small, independent, sustainable farm in a highly consolidated and specialized industry is difficult, Graber says. For farms like his to survive, he argues that young farmers need more opportunities to build businesses that are diversified rather than dependent on producing a single commodity.

“To stay farming, I think we’re going to have to think outside the box,” he says. “We’re not just going to be able to grow corn one year and soybeans the other year.”

For Graber, that could mean integrating livestock with crop production, producing value-added foods, or finding markets that reward farmers for more sustainable practices, such as Niman Ranch. The network of more than 600 independent U.S. farmers and ranchers offers a guaranteed market for cattle raised to high standards of sustainable and humane farming practices.

Graber sees a growing group of farmers experimenting with cover crops, grazing livestock, and taking other approaches to improving soil health. He says change may happen gradually, but he is encouraged by a willingness among farmers to question conventional systems and try something different.

“To see people’s minds click, even if it’s just on little things, just to start thinking about it…Then [people can] hopefully see where that health of the livestock and health of the crops and health of the soil comes together,” says Graber.

Graber believes the future of farming will depend on rebuilding connections between soil, crops, and livestock, as well as between farmers and eaters. He believes farmers themselves will need to take an active role in shaping that future.

“At the end of the day, government’s not going to save anybody,” he says. “So, it’s up to us as farmers, and the local people, to work together and figure it out.”

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The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) extends its warmest congratulations to the Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), one of its core members, on being named a 2026 Right Livelihood Laureate. The Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” honours RWA “for organising rural women across Southern Africa into a united force defending land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession.”

The recognition belongs to a movement built from the ground up. Since 250 rural women founded it in Limpopo Province, South Africa, in 2009, RWA has grown into a self-organised movement of more than 178,000 small-scale farmers in eleven countries: Angola, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through its flat, volunteer-led structure and its Agroecology and Feminist Schools, RWA advances feminist agroecology and food and seed sovereignty across the region. It has established 24 seed multiplication sites and documented hundreds of Indigenous seed varieties, protecting farmer-managed seed systems from commercialisation and strengthening communities’ resilience to climate shocks. The movement’s collective voice helped secure Zambia’s 2016 law mandating equal land allocation to women and Eswatini’s landmark 2018 Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill.

Dr Million Belay, General Coordinator of AFSA, said:

“Our hearts are full today. We congratulate our sisters of the Rural Women’s Assembly on this richly deserved recognition. For years, RWA has shown all of us what food sovereignty looks like when it is built by the women who grow Africa’s food, save its seeds and hold its communities together. This Award honours every woman farmer who has stood her ground for land, seed and dignity. It also sends a message to social movements across Africa: our struggles for agroecology, for justice and for control over our own food systems are seen, they matter, and they are bearing fruit. The future of African food is being sown, patiently and collectively, by rural women.”

For AFSA and its members, this Award affirms a conviction we share: food sovereignty is inseparable from women’s rights to land, seed and bodily autonomy, and lasting change grows from people organising together.

RWA’s journey, in the words of its Regional Coordinator Mercia Andrews, shows that   “no single voice moves a mountain; it is the patient, collective weight of thousands of rural women organizing together that has shifted what was once thought immovable.”

AFSA is proud to stand alongside RWA and joins the global community in celebrating this achievement. The 2026 Laureates will be honoured at the Award Presentation in Stockholm on 1 December 2026.

These organizations are available to help farmers through the process of succession planning. North Carolina Organizations NC Farmlink Roanoke Sustainable Forestry Project Land Loss Prevention Project Regional / National Organizations Carolina Farm Stewardship Association USDA NRCS Federation of Southern Cooperatives Black Family Land Trust

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Figure out what your soil needs: The Dirt on Soil Testing, RAFI’s guide to testing your soil OrganiCalc, an online worksheet for calculating the right quantities for soil amendments Learn about soil amendment strategies: Soil Health, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Strategies for Farm Soil Amendment, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Choosing a Soil Amendment, Colorado […]

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Sign up for Planted Pathways: The FOCN Book Club. Our first book is Africulture: How the Principles, Practices, Plants, and People of African Descent Have Shaped American Agriculture by Michael Carter Jr. Fill out this form to request technical assistance on Farm Service Agency loans.

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Bee U NYC is using urban beekeeping to teach young people about food systems, biodiversity, and environmental careers, while fostering the next generation of pollinator stewards.

Bees, along with other pollinators, help reproduce 35 percent of the world’s food crops and nearly 75 percent of flowering plants, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that pollinators are under growing pressure from habitat loss, the climate crisis, pests, and pesticides. Bee U is raising awareness of these issues while supporting the broader ecosystem around pollinator research.

“Many young New Yorkers have limited opportunities to learn directly about pollination, biodiversity, urban agriculture, or where their food comes from,” André Ware, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Bee U NYC, tells Food Tank. “Through beekeeping, participants begin to see the connections among pollinators, plants, climate, food production, neighborhood green spaces, and environmental justice.”

The organization’s paid Urban Beekeeping Fellowship teaches young people between the ages of 16 and 24 how to manage hives, identify pollinators, understand bee biology, and explore careers in sustainability and agriculture. This year, Bee U NYC accepted 46 Fellows, its largest class to date. Since 2021, nearly 100 young people have completed the program.

“We believe that a more sustainable food system requires a more inclusive workforce,” Ware says. “It is not enough to teach young people about environmental challenges. They need paid opportunities to build skills, develop professional networks, and imagine themselves as future environmental leaders and scientists.”

The program also builds community partnerships. Fellows learn in local community gardens, urban farms, cultural institutions, and neighborhood organizations instead of traditional classrooms. These experiences connect pollinator health with food production, environmental justice, and local history.

The organization’s work comes at a time when public investment in agricultural research faces growing uncertainty. Following the closure of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s century-old Beltsville Bee Lab, food systems researchers like Dr. Jennie Durant, a food systems researcher at UC Davis and former USDA fellow, warned that the loss of research capacity and technical expertise could weaken support for farmers and reduce crop yields over time.

Programs like Bee U NYC can translate science into action by educating future beekeepers, supporting pollinator stewardship, and building stronger connections between communities, the environment, and local food systems. Their work helps ensure that research does not stay in laboratories but reaches the people who will shape the future of agriculture.

Ware says pollinator education must extend beyond honeybees. “Supporting pollinator health also means understanding the science behind native pollinators, planting diverse forage, harmful pesticide practices, and managing urban hives responsibly,” he tells Food Tank.

As bee populations continue to face new challenges like rising temperatures and loss of habitat, Bee U believes that education may become one of the most valuable conservation tools.

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Photo courtesy of Bee U

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This September, as part of the Global Day of Action Against WTO and Free Trade Agreements, La Via Campesina hosted a global webinar featuring a lecture by renowned author, academic, and activist Raj Patel.

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A recent review in Frontiers in Microbiology finds that heavy fertilizer use by rice farmers in China is limiting the ability of soil microbes to promote crop growth. The result is a greater dependency on artificial inputs, which threatens water and terrestrial ecosystems. But researchers find that integrating legumes can help mitigate these harms and help farmers use fertilizer more efficiently.

Nitrogen fixation is a natural process that converts atmospheric nitrogen into a form that plants can use. While nitrogen is vital for plant health, too much can harm ecosystems, says soil health expert Yuting Liang of the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“In flooded rice paddies, excessive nitrogen can increase nitrogen losses and nitrous oxide emissions, affecting microbial processes involved in the nitrogen cycle,” Liang tells Food Tank.

Liang notes that in contrast to conventional fertilizers, biological nitrogen fixation “supports a slower and more efficient nitrogen cycle.” But if the soil is already rich in nitrogen from fertilizers, microbes will respond by shutting the process down. “Many nitrogen-fixing microorganisms tend to reduce their activity because the need to fix atmospheric nitrogen becomes much lower,” she explains.

This leads to a paradoxical feedback loop, the study explains. The more fertilizer a farmer adds to secure a harvest, the less nitrogen the soil makes on its own, and the more fertilizer the next crop needs. Instead of helping farmers cut back on fertilizer, it encourages overuse.

“It is so connected to many problems while it is essential for food production,” Wim de Vries, a soil scientist and professor at Wageningen University, tells Food Tank.

De Vries argues the first solution is to apply less fertilizer. He points to what he calls the four-R principle: the right amount, right type, right time, and right place. “The right rate is extremely important in regions like China where they over-fertilize,” he says. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, China is the largest producer and consumer of nitrogen fertilizers and remains one of the largest rice producers globally.

Soil scientists like Mark Peoples of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization say crop diversification can help reduce reliance on artificial fertilizers.

“A diverse system is likely to be more resilient and have better environmental outcomes than a landscape dominated by highly specialized, frequent cereal cropping that is heavily reliant upon fertilizer,” Peoples tells Food Tank. He notes that legume cover crops can increase soil nitrogen availability for cereal crops like rice, suggesting that increased global and regional demand for legumes can support sustainable farming.

Liang agrees, stating, “In regions where conditions are suitable, rice-legume rotations or green manure systems can further strengthen natural nitrogen cycling and increase microbial diversity.” By planting legumes during the dry season and rice during the wet season, farms retain nitrogen-fixing microbes which support soil nutrient availability.

But to encourage farmers to plant more legumes, the demand must exist, says Adrian Leip, co-chair of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe’s Expert Panel on Nitrogen and Food. “It’s often not the farmers who have the power to change, at least not alone, because they are constrained by contracts and value chains,” he tells Food Tank. He notes that farmers need these market signals to transition to more sustainable practices, including crop rotation.

But dietary trends seem to be moving in the opposite direction, Peoples says. He sees that more eaters are seeking animal protein over pulses and legumes while governments subsidize cereal production and fertilizers.

Leip and De Vries call for a systemic approach to change this. “It’s dietary change, it’s food waste reduction, it’s circular agriculture, and it’s improved practices,” De Vries tells Food Tank. “These are the four. If you want to reduce the problem, you need to look at all four of them. And never only one is the answer.”

Leip also underscores that these solutions must work for producers: “This should be done in a way that is not harmful for the farming community. They are keeping the land intact; if they can, they would like to make it in a way that is sustainable… [while] conserving biodiversity.”

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Photo courtesy of Ivan Bandura, Unsplash

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Agrarian reform is historical reparation. It is not only about economic restitution, although that is also important. We want the right to access land to be guaranteed.

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According to AOP, these negotiations could pave the way for amendments to laws that would facilitate accession to the 1991 International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 1991).

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Omnibus X is a legislative package which, under the usual pretext of simplification to streamline the pesticide approval system, weakens the precautionary principle at the heart of European pesticide regulation.

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The event brought together peasant union leaders, researchers and lawyers from five South Asian countries to discuss the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) and its implementation nearly eight years after adoption.

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The intersection of food and education goes well beyond just school lunches; food systems can be a tool for instruction on a variety of subjects and values, educators, farmers, chefs, and other experts said during the “Future of Food Education” Summit during Climate Week NYC.

The event, presented in partnership with Pilot Light and with support from Nielsen Massey, focused on ensuring that children from a young age are thinking critically about where food comes from, developing tools to fuel their bodies and minds, and reflecting on how they can be change agents for climate action.

“You can teach any subject through food,” says Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn, Executive Director of Pilot Light. “Food makes learning relevant.”

Watch the livestream recording on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

“The food system is flawed; it’s no secret. It’s important to remind ourselves—and our kids—that they are a part of a change. It’s important that we plant those seeds,” says Shanon Morris, Chief Program Officer at Harlem Grown.

In schools, food can give teachers permission to be creative, says Caitlin Arens, Food Education Fellowships Director at Pilot Light. Teaching is a form of food system action, she says. 

To facilitate this, Pilot Light has created the United States’ first-ever Food Education Standards, benchmarks for teaching food systems and using food as a pathway for broader learning.

“We think of those standards as a common language that we can all speak,” says Taylor Meredith, Education Policy Advisor at Pilot Light. “When everybody is speaking the same language in the classroom, that’s when we have impact in the broader community.”

Food education can also take place outside of traditional classroom settings, including on farms and in gardens.

“The power of bringing people together for shared experiences is transformational,” and school gardens bring that to kids, says Lyndsey Waugh, Executive Director of the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. “Human connections spark around food.”

“If we can eat better, we can teach the next generations to love the garden and the harvest and the things that we can pull from the ground,” says Rev. Linda Carmen Bryant, Co-Founder of San Antonio Million Gardens Project and Pastor of Grant Community AME Church in San Antonio, Texas. “If we get the kids excited (about growing food), they will lead us.”

But teaching kids to grow food is not enough alone. Preparing young people for careers in agriculture also means teaching them business skills and guiding them in navigating financial resources.

“There’s power in the fact that your kids are the next generation. I am not too scared about the next generation of producers; what I am scared about is their ability to access (resources),” says Gerardo Martinez, Founder of Wild Kid Acres and a Marine Corps Veteran.

It’s true that land is becoming more commoditized and more difficult for younger farmers to obtain, says Karen Washington, a Food Justice Advocate, Farmer, and Author—but the solution cannot simply be to give them land without also making sure they can afford access to water, electricity, equipment, and agricultural inputs. Collective ownership makes this more feasible, she says.

“Now is the time to organize. People are forming ecosystems, cooperatives, collaborative organizations; they are doing the work,” Washington says. “Make sure that you’re connecting with your community, connecting with your growers. … The remedy is, know your local farmer.”

And this connection between eaters and food can start in schools, including at lunchtime. In New York City’s public schools, nutrition educators collaborate with students to get feedback on menu items and model healthy eating patterns, says Jeremy Walter, Executive Director of Food & Nutrition Education for New York City Public Schools.

“We’re more and more trying to optimize the cafeteria as a classroom,” says Nancy Easton, Executive Director and Founder of Wellness in the Schools.

In her classroom at P.S. 072 Dr. William Dorney, educator Amanda Torres uses food to teach multiplication and division—but she also wants school to be a place where kids feel empowered to be curious, find their voice, and create change.

“People talk about the past and talk about the future, but what we’re doing now matters,” she says. “We all have the power to change. Don’t wait on anyone to change for you.”

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post The Future Of Food Education Is In Classrooms, On Farms, And Everywhere In Between appeared first on Food Tank.

It was during the dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier, from 1956 to 1986, that Tèt Kole took shape, long before its official birth.

The post Haiti: Haitian Peasant Movement “Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen” Celebrates 40 Years of Struggle appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Happy birthday, Marion Nestle!

At Climate Week NYC, Food Tank held a 90th birthday celebration to honor the legendary food policy expert, writer, thinker, and Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. 

During the evening, Marion received the Rodale Institute Organic Stewardship Award for Lifetime Achievement in Education.

“Marion really is a total badass who, for decades, has told some of the most powerful industries in the world exactly what they didn’t want her to say, and she said it loudly—with footnotes,” says Renée Baran, Dean of Education at the Rodale Institute. 

Watch the entire livestream of the event, hosted in partnership with New York University and the Rodale Institute, on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

Throughout the celebration, Marion’s food system friends and colleagues joined the stage to offer toasts:

“Marion is a changemaker. Marion is a force of nature…She has taught us how to think about food, argue about food, question and challenge food, and how to eat.”

—Jennifer Berg, Clinical Professor and Department Chair of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University

“(Food) is sociology, agriculture, history, and community, but above all, it’s politics. Today it’s obvious, but 30 years ago, it certainly was not…It’s because of Marion that we have a new generation of food people.”

—Ruth Reichl, Author and Former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet

“Marion can walk into a supermarket and see an entire political economy. Marion’s voice is needed now more than ever.”

—Frances Moore Lappé, Author and Co-Founder of the Small Planet Institute

“Marion, as we say in the business, gives a good quote…but she also tells the truth.”

—Kim Severson, National Food Culture Reporter at The New York Times

“Marion occupies a place no one else does in our understanding of the world. Years ago I called her matchlessly lucid, and she hasn’t changed a bit.”

—Corby Kummer, Executive Director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, and Senior Lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science

“Marion has never been interested in telling people what they want to hear. She asks the uncomfortable questions. She follows the money. She looks at who has power, who doesn’t, and why. And she has spent decades helping all of us understand that food is never just about what is on our plates.”

—Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post Raising A Toast To Food Politics Expert Marion Nestle On Her 90th Birthday appeared first on Food Tank.

The climate crisis moves quickly. That means our solutions need to move even faster, panelists said during Climate Week NYC.

The Summit “Acting at the Speed of Crisis: Challenges & Opportunities for Food Security and Rapid Response,” held in partnership with RAAPID and Arrell Food Institute, brought global leaders together to explore how we can use fast-moving tech to build resilience.

“There are a lot of evolving crises where, if we work together, bringing in both the tech side and the local expertise…we can move faster to get not only early warnings but action when we need it,” says Inbal Becker-Reshef, Managing Director of Microsoft AI for Good Lab, Founder & Co-Director of NASA Harvest, and Founder of RAAPID.

Watch the livestream recording on Food Tank’s YouTube channel. 

“It’s easy to get numb to these issues…and the underlying assumptions of the global food trading system are getting eroded,” says Evan Fraser, Executive Director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph. “We need the data to anticipate where the problems are going to lead.” 

Indeed, says Simon Winter, Vice President for Reimagining Humanitarian Nutrition Security at RF Catalytic Capital, “the prevalence and availability and access to very advanced data is increasing.” But to be able to analyze this data and actually turn information into action, panelists said, we need to work with technological tools like artificial intelligence (AI)—not against them.

“A big part of the challenge is the fact that (we have) vastly more information than human beings can look at, so we need AI,” says Andrew Zolli, Chief Impact Officer at Planet. “Human attention is the scarcest resource we have right now.”

As an example, Planet Remained and the Hewlett Foundation presented a case study of Grapevine, a way to create and replicate city-level policy using AI tools. Broadly speaking, if we don’t adopt AI, we’ll be entering at a disadvantage compared to oil and plastic industries that already do use the tools, says Adam Met, Musician of Multi-Platinum band AJR, Founder and Executive Director of Planet Reimagined, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. 

“When you gather enough of this data…it makes it easier and easier for a city to say, OK, my city looks like this other city, to be able to implement it,” Met says. “This tool allows them to do it from home,” metaphorically speaking.

Dave Turk, Program Director of Environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, echoes the value of AI for making the right choice be the easy choice.

“Especially when you get to the local level, it just gets down to pragmatism and problem solving,” Turk says. “The power of AI done right is to make it super efficient.”

Better information-gathering can also help us respond to geopolitical conflicts and wars on a global scale, other panelists explained. 

“We are in a very tight situation right now globally,” says Máximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). “In the case of agriculture, AI is an opportunity.”

For example, because a significant portion of agricultural lands in Ukraine are occupied or impacted by the Russian war, “satellite data is of crucial importance,” H.E. Taras Vysotskyi, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, told us via video remarks.

“Globally, we are seeing an increase in the weaponization of food,” says Michael Werz, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Food security is one of the few areas where AI doesn’t totally freak me out.”

But technological tools like AI are only valuable if they’re used well and paired with other solutions, says David Beasley, Trustee of The Rockefeller Foundation and the Former Governor of South Carolina and Former Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme. 

“You’ve got to make sure you have good data; bad data can create a lot of harm,” he says. “You get data, and if you don’t use it strategically, what good is it?”

Better data might help us know where to target our philanthropic dollars and policy resources—but, of course, we can only accomplish these goals if funding and legislation already exist. Just as we need action on strengthening our data collection, we need action on these other social factors, too. 

“We have more data, and that data allows us to predict crises better, but unfortunately it doesn’t give us the capacity to act,” says Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, Founder and CEO, Food Systems for the Future. “What does (enable action) are the permissions from government and finance, and that speed has not changed with data.”

We have to be both optimistic and realistic, panelists said: Data can guide us in changing behavior, but data alone does not change behavior. Data can highlight the climate protections that local and renewable energy provide; data can highlight how critical plant-rich diets are toward tackling the climate crisis—but we’re still responsible for building momentum, says Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group.

“It doesn’t just magically happen,” she says.

Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.

The post Data And AI Tech Can Speed Up Our Responses To Climate Change, Not Replace Them appeared first on Food Tank.