Food Tank

The story we are often told about Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of replacement, particularly in agriculture. The machines are coming for the tractor, the picker, and then eventually, the farmer. But the real potential of AI in agriculture isn’t replacement but what happens when technology serves the people already in the system, extending their sight rather than overriding their judgment. Successful innovation starts with local knowledge and widens it.

Agriculture, while obviously important to our economies, is one of the slowest to integrate new technology. I learned this lesson in 2017 when I joined an AgTech startup called Artemis Ag, a software company focused on bringing people, processes, and farm data into the cloud. Our initial premise was that software could increase a grower’s view of the farm and drastically improve their efficiency. Initially, user adoption was slow. We learned that we hadn’t fully accounted for the farmer’s experience. We didn’t consider the level of knowledge that comes with years of growing in their local environments, nor the impact that tiny changes to input costs could have on their planning. We especially didn’t account for physical design decisions that affect how and where technology can be used or the fact that farmers, broadly speaking, are more likely to be outside and less likely to be on a computer. And this was just in the U.S.

Globally, it’s a different set of problems. On the ground, technology uptake is uneven and intensely local. In rural areas, 21 percent of people in Africa use the internet, compared with 75 percent in the Americas. Access is only one hurdle. A synthesis of 30 studies found that smallholders run into several barriers at once: capital, credit, weak supply chains, and plain doubt about whether a new tool will ever pay off. The technology itself is rarely the bottleneck.

A food system rests on six interdependent foundations—natural resources, production, manufacturing and supply chain, logistics, a strong consumer base, and effective governance and policy. When one gives way, the others feel it. For example, last year Hurricane Melissa destroyed Jamaica’s agricultural base, destroying many of its farms, roads and logistics infrastructure. In the aftermath, the government went to work to figure out the best policy and long-term plan needed, but it raised questions. How do you restart food production and manufacturing? And how do you rebuild the supply chain and logistics while balancing some of the country’s more foundational needs, such as new, more resilient homes, a better electricity infrastructure, and new roads? These questions present an opportunity for AI and innovation to help connect the dots between the six foundations.

A great example can be found in Aquaconnect, a startup my company SecondMuse worked with in 2019, when they joined our Seafood Innovation Project in Indonesia. We supported them as they explored bringing to Southeast Asia what it had built for shrimp farmers back home in India. Most of the shrimp eaten in India are not caught at sea but raised in farm ponds, a livelihood that supports whole coastal communities. The farmers who run those ponds carry real expertise, much of it learned by hand and kept in notebooks. When pond conditions slip, yields fall and the runoff can harm nearby waters. The farmers were not short on knowledge or effort. They were short on sight: a way to see what was happening in the water before it cost them a harvest.

Aquaconnect set out to close that gap by building on what farmers already knew. The company pairs local, on-the-pond expertise with AI and satellite remote sensing, using geospatial data and deep learning models to read a pond’s condition and stage remotely, without a site visit. The technology widens what the farmer can see and act on. Aquaconnect has grown from roughly 3,000 farmers when we first met them in 2019 to more than 90,000 aquaculture farmers across six Indian states today.

It’s here that AI proves its worth, not by doing the work, but by showing the worker the whole field and helping to close the trust-and-risk gap. It offers a bird’s-eye view across foundations, connecting a decision in one part of the system to its consequences in another.

AI and prediction technology lets us ask sharper questions of messy data. This was the power of Artemis when it was acquired by Iunu. Iunu wrapped Artemis’s technology into a Machine vision product that helped growers make stronger, more insight-driven decisions.

So how can we use AI to build a better future in agriculture? AI is not a substitute for engaging trusted local institutions and local growers. They are the key to providing the right mix of meaningful data. Often, farms have outdated legacy software. Be willing to do the hard work of collecting and cleaning up the data before introducing AI. It becomes the difference between building something truly useful and sustainable versus not.

In addition, don’t forget the humans behind the work and the expertise they’ve cultivated over generations. This is the step that enables u to bring in insights that may be obvious to a 30-year veteran farmer who is irreplaceable when they retire.

This idea builds on years of groundwork. In 2019, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Food System Vision Prize, inviting teams from around the world to propose transformational visions for the year 2050. These were visions that would enable local communities to describe, and ultimately attain, a regenerative, equitable, and nourishing food future. The Foundation distributed US$2 million in prizes to 10 winning teams, whose stories are featured in a series of documentary shorts. The Prize proved that communities everywhere, given the right framework, could imagine their own food futures with rigor and ambition.

We are working together on the next step in enabling ambitious ideas for future food systems. It is a platform SecondMuse is building, supported through a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation. It takes a proven food-system visioning methodology and puts it directly in the hands of communities, so they can build hope-filled visions of their own food future without needing outside facilitators or institutional backing. It is the thesis in working form: communities author their own visions; the structure helps them see the whole system rather than one slice; and it adapts to local context by design.

Aquaconnect works because it did not ask farmers to abandon what generations had taught them. It read their notebooks, added satellites and algorithms, and handed the result back to the same people who had been managing those ponds all along. Iunu did the same thing from a different angle, wrapping machine vision around what Artemis had already built, so growers could see patterns in their own fields they’d been too close to notice.

Do that across a whole food system and the picture changes. The grower sees not just the field but the weather bearing down on it and the market waiting past it. The founder fighting food waste sees whether the real problem is spoilage or a selling radius drawn too tight. The advisor sees which pond’s trouble is about to become the problem of the district. None of them stops relying on what they know. Each of them can finally see past it. That is the food system worth building with AI. Not one run by machines, but one where the people already inside it are no longer working in the dark.

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Photo courtesy of Kat Kelley, Unsplash

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As supply chain disruptions and tariffs continue to strain farmers, producers like John Boyd, Jr. are calling on eaters to use their vote to protect the future of agriculture in the United States. 

Diesel prices are hovering around US$6.35 per gallon—just below the record high of US$6.53 seen in September—according to AAA. Boyd, the President and Founder of the National Black Farmers Association, reports that it recently cost him around US$1,000 to fill his combine. 

“I found myself letting some bills go right now, and I made the choice to get my crop harvested out of the field while I can,” Boyd tells Food Tank. “Healthcare had to go.”

Boyd points to the Trump-Vance Administration, whose trade policies and decision to launch a war in Iran are pushing food producers to the brink. A report from North Dakota State University’s (NDSU) Center for Agricultural Policy and Trade Studies finds that market disruptions are resulting in significant costs to farmers, causing greater instability. 

Most producers, Boyd says, are “really working in the red.” 

The conditions are reminiscent of the 1980s farm crisis. Boyd managed to keep his farm afloat as debt soared and many families were forced from their land four decades ago. “But this is different,” he says about today. “It’s intentional.”

To Boyd, American agriculture can’t survive if the country stays on course. “There is no way that you continue to support this type of agriculture for our country because there won’t be any left,” he tells Food Tank. “There’ll be a handful of corporate farmers and a lot of data centers if you don’t change your thinking and look the other way.”

As the midterm elections approach, he urges people everywhere to vote, arguing the future of the country’s agriculture sector depends on it. “That’s the only way to put any sort of pressure on this runaway train,” he says. “So my message is: Go out and vote, vote early, and let’s put some checks and balances back in our country.”

Listen to the full conversation with John Boyd, Jr. on Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg to hear more about the urgency Boyd sees, his advice to Black farmers frustrated with the political system, and what it will take to stop farm foreclosures.

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Photo courtesy of Yurii Hetsko, Unsplash

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Dolores Huerta, a labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the organization that became the United Farm Workers (UFW), died on October 28, 2026, at her home in Bakersfield, California, according to the Dolores Huerta Foundation. She was 96.

“Her life’s work was to empower her community to face and overcome injustices, and she has left farm workers and the entire Latino community stronger and more organized than she found it,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement.

Born Dolores Clara Fernández on April 10, 1930, in Dawson, New Mexico, Huerta grew up in Stockton, California. After earning a teaching credential, Huerta began working as an elementary school teacher in the San Joaquin Valley.

Witnessing the poverty experienced by her students and their families, she decided to pursue community organizing. “I thought I could do more by organizing farmworkers than by trying to teach their hungry children,” she recalled in a 2017 PBS Independent Lens documentary about her life.

Huerta became involved with the Community Service Organization (CSO), a Latino civil rights group. She organized voter registration drives, advocated for improvements in underserved neighborhoods, and founded the Agricultural Workers Association.

She met fellow organizer César Chávez in 1955, and in 1962, Huerta and Chávez established the National Farm Workers Association. The organization later merged with the Filipino-led Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form what became the United Farm Workers.

During the Delano grape strike in 1965, Huerta helped organize a nationwide boycott that brought millions of consumers into the campaign and put economic pressure on California grape growers. In 1970, after five years of strikes and boycotts, Huerta helped negotiate collective bargaining agreements which secured higher wages, health benefits, pensions, and protections against unsafe working conditions.

In 1963, she helped secure disability insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits for California agricultural workers. She later helped build support for the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975. The law established farmworkers’ right to union representation and required employers to bargain in good faith with unions chosen by their employees.

Beyond wages and labor rights, Huerta fought to protect farmworkers from hazardous pesticides and helped organize a boycott to pressure growers to reduce their use. She also advocated for immigration reform, reproductive rights, and greater political representation for women and Latino communities.

“As a Latina in the labor movement, she challenged the norms that kept women of color out of those spaces and brought women and families onto picket lines and up the ranks of unions and community organizations,” Neidi Dominguez, Executive Director of Organized Power In Numbers, said in a statement. “She showed that women were and are central to the farmworkers and all workers’ collective struggle.”

She coined the phrase “Sí, se puede,” or “Yes, it can be done,” which became a rallying cry for labor and civil rights movements.

Huerta was jailed 22 times during labor demonstrations and endured threats and violence throughout her career. In 1988, while protesting then-Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, Huerta was struck by a police officer’s baton, breaking several ribs and rupturing her spleen. Following her recovery, she continued organizing and increasingly focused on women’s rights and encouraging Latinas to seek elected office.

In March 2026, Huerta bravely disclosed in an interview with the The New York Times that Chávez had sexually assaulted her twice during the 1960s. Both assaults resulted in pregnancies.

Huerta explained in a statement that she had remained silent for decades because she feared revealing the abuse would undermine the farmworker movement. “The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” Huerta wrote.

After stepping down from her leadership role at UFW, Huerta established the Dolores Huerta Foundation in the early 2000s. The organization supports community organizing and civic participation, particularly in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It has trained thousands of community members to advocate for improvements in education, environmental health, public services, and political representation.

Huerta’s contributions earned numerous honors, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. She was also the first Latina inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Schools are named in her honor in California, Texas and Colorado. She received 15 honorary degrees.

Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg had the chance to meet Huerta several years ago in California and remembers that “she was magnetic and so full of energy. Her leadership inspired so many people in the food and agriculture movement.”

Huerta continued participating in demonstrations, registering voters, mentoring young organizers, and advocating for underserved communities into her 90s. Throughout her life, she emphasized the importance of empowering people to organize and advocate for themselves.

“I hope that my legacy will be one of an organizer that organized to fight injustice,” Huerta said in the 2025 documentary Seeds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Dolores Huerta. “We want to give our children an inheritance of justice, right, not jewels or property or money.”

Huerta is survived by 14 children, 24 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren, and 7 great-great-grandchildren. Her legacy continues through the United Farm Workers, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and generations of organizers working to advance labor rights and social justice.

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

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A vertical farm in the Camille Graham Correctional Institution in South Carolina serves education space for incarcerated women, where women gain skills in farming and workforce development.

The 20-week program teaches women how to plant, grow, and harvest hydroponic lettuce, along with other skills in food handling. Around 15 inmates participate, producing over 3,000 heads of lettuce every week. South Carolina’s Department of Corrections (DOC) then sells the lettuces back to the facilities, where they are served to inmates across Camille Graham and two neighboring women’s prisons.

The goal is to equip women with skills for life after incarceration and support their wellbeing through hands-on connection with agriculture and more nutritious meals.

In addition to being the first controlled agriculture operation in a U.S. prison, the Camille Graham farm is the pilot program for the Growing Justice initiative, operated by criminal justice nonprofit Impact Justice. This summer, Camille Graham began its third cohort of the program, and Impact Justice also launched a Growing Justice location at a correctional facility in California.

“Access to fresh vegetables and locally grown produce is pretty rare” in prisons, Kristina Bell, the Growing Justice Director at Impact Justice, tells Food Tank. “We’ve seen tremendous positive feedback around the fact that they have access to this lettuce, and tremendous pride as well. The participants know that others in the facility are benefiting and enjoying the produce that they’ve grown.”

The technology is sourced by vertical farm company AmplifiedAg. CEO David Flynn tells Food Tank that the farm is a repurposed shipping container with an HVAC system and LED lighting that allow multiple stacked rows of lettuce to grow.

One container has the capacity to produce 40,000 pounds of lettuce every year. Rick Doran, the Division Director of Agriculture for South Carolina’s Department of Corrections (DOC), says that around 4,000 servings of lettuce are harvested each week.

Doran remembers being “blown away” by the technology’s high output, low water intake, and logistical ease for a correctional facility. He was also inspired by the growing potential of controlled environment agriculture in South Carolina, which he said could create job opportunities for participants of the program, who train in this field, after their release.

“Any time we can show people how to be more self-sustaining and understand where their food comes from and what goes into producing and harvesting and being safe with that food—it fits terrifically into the whole idea that when the ladies finally move out of the institutional setting,” Doran tells Food Tank. “It helps keep the recidivism lower, and that’s one of the big goals.”

The Growing Justice curriculum has three main pillars: hands-on work at the farm, classroom instruction on agriculture and food production, and workforce development, which includes resume writing and interview preparation. Participants spend around 10 hours with the program each week, over the span of five months. By the end, they receive a U.S. Department of Agriculture Good Agricultural Practices food safety certification, as well as a US$1,450 stipend after their release from the facility.

As water depletion becomes a growing issue in farming-forward South Carolina, the DOC continues to seek newer technologies, like vertical farming, to build efficiency in its agricultural operations. Tom Osmer, one of the department’s Assistant Deputy Directors, is excited by the Camille Graham farm’s model. He believes the combination of resource-efficient production, revenue generation for the DOC, nutritional value for inmates, and its potential to improve participants’ wellbeing and livelihoods make it an all-around win.

Impact Justice and South Carolina’s DOC describe the program’s influence as immense. “When they’re a part of something, they take more interest in rehabilitation, and it’s a form of therapy for the inmates to work and see their work come to fruition,” Osmer tells Food Tank. “We want them to live a fruitful life on the outside, so these are skills and disciplines they’re learning to keep them productive.”

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Photo courtesy of Impact Justice

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Baltimore, Maryland is leveraging a historic US$11 million grant to invest in holistic solutions that build resilience in the city’s food and agriculture systems.

The city’s Food Policy and Planning (FPP) Division received the funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to improve access to healthy food without depending on brick-and-mortar grocery stores. Taylor LaFave, Baltimore’s Chief of Food Policy and Planning sees the strategy as innovative thanks to its comprehensive approach. In total, it spans five programs covering food access, Food is Medicine, and urban agriculture education.

The strategy builds on lessons from Baltimore’s COVID-19 emergency food response between 2020 and 2022. The city led an almost US$40 million effort to distribute more than 180 million servings of fresh fruits and vegetables to residents in what it calls “healthy food priority areas.”

That experience reinforced the importance of providing foods residents needed. “They not only needed it, but they also wanted it, they valued it, and it made a significant improvement in their lives and in their health,” says LaFave.

The pandemic also highlighted the shortcomings of traditional food retailers. For more than 10 years, Baltimore operated a tax incentive program to attract and retain grocery stores. But when stores shuttered, they realized that it may not be possible to bring a supermarket to every neighborhood.

“We can’t continue to rely on large private corporations that are ultimately only interested in profit to solve our healthy food access issues, and to improve our city’s food system,” LaFave tells Food Tank.

The ARPA investment instead supports programs available across the city, with the goal of reaching residents through multiple channels.

One initiative is the Black Butterfly Teaching Farm, supported through a partnership with the Farm Alliance of Baltimore. Located in a residential neighborhood near an elementary school and a high school, the farm combines food production with community engagement. It also offers mentorship and training for emerging farmers of color.

Neighbors have responded positively to the program, asking how to get involved and where they can buy the produce, says Najahla Olumiji, Baltimore’s Food Systems Planner.

The farm is also encouraging students to learn about urban food production. One group Olumiji saw during a recent visit was “shocked at how little space it takes to grow thousands of pounds of produce,” she tells Food Tank.

Another program under the strategy is Food Rx, hosted at MedStar Harbor Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital. It provides enrolled patients with enough produce for 10 medically tailored meals per week to improve diet-related health outcomes and reduce the costs of care.

The city is also expanding access to fresh produce through the Produce Box Distribution Program, which connected residents with the equivalent of 195 million servings of produce since 2020. And with the B’More Fresh Program, they are able to provide US$30 in monthly fruit and vegetable vouchers to recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) when they shop online at Amazon and Safeway. The fifth program of the city’s strategy expands the use of electronic nutrition incentives at Baltimore City farmers markets.

Despite the successes that FPP has celebrated, the city is preparing for the end of ARPA funding at the end of October. “None of these programs will be able to continue how they’ve been operating by relying just on city funding,” LaFave explains.

But FPP doesn’t want these programs to disappear. They have secured some funding to put toward programs including Food Rx and Black Butterfly Teaching Farm. And each fiscal year, they receive US$150,000 from the city’s general fund, which they plan to use to help cover funding gaps and leverage additional grants.

In June 2026, the Division also received a grant from the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. As part of this, the team will work with researchers from the Center for a Livable Future over the next year to evaluate the programs and explore options for continuing them.

Public-private partnerships will be particularly important to sustain this work, LaFave believes. “We need national funders to step up and work more collaboratively together across the food system.”

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Photo courtesy of the Black Butterfly Teaching Farm

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Food Is Medicine, a new book by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, offers a blueprint to transform food and farming systems in a way that heals people, the economy, and the planet.

“Being a healthy American adult is an anomaly,” says Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. He notes that 94 percent of people in the U.S. over the age of 18 are “not where they should be” in terms of cardiovascular and metabolic health. 

The food system is “the top cause of death and disability in the country,” Mozaffarian tells Food Tank. “This is the top cause of preventable healthcare spending. This is the top cause of devastation to our oceans, soil, water, and climate. And if you put it all together, this is actually the top issue facing humanity.” 

His new book addresses these challenges, acknowledging their complexity. It also outlines the solutions available, revealing how the growing Food is Medicine movement can help communities produce and consume food in a way that supports public health and the environment. 

“We have the science and the evidence on what needs to change,” Mozaffarian tells Food Tank. “And we really can fix our food system in a very short amount of time.”

Mozaffarian also wants readers to understand a shift in diet shouldn’t be viewed in terms of sacrifice. For too long, he says, nutrition has been framed “in terms of deprivation and a fight against food.” He hopes the book will help people see things differently. “For me, healthy eating is about embracing and celebrating the good, more minimally processed, healthy, delicious foods.” 

Food Is Medicine is for healthcare providers, policymakers, and business leaders. “But at the end of the day,” Mozaffarian says, “this is for the general public to understand the levers we need to shift and move so that 10 years from now, we’re not having the same conversation.” 

Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian on Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg to hear more about Food Is Medicine: Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System, tips for eating healthy, and why the solutions we need come down to systems change rather than individual behavior change alone. 

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Can we change the future of food and health by changing the words we use? Consider what happens when we shift our ambition from surviving to thriving. From conserving ecosystems to regenerating them. From extending lifespan to fostering healthspan. Words shape our mindsets, the stories we tell, and how we act. A single word can expand an entire ambition.

As we reflect on World Food Day and reports emerging from this year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and Climate Week NYC, we are witnessing an expansion of one of humanity’s greatest collective ambitions: from feeding the world to nourishing it. For generations, feeding the world has inspired food initiatives and international cooperation that have helped sustain billions of lives. With hundreds of millions still experiencing hunger and food insecurity, ensuring everyone has enough to eat remains urgent, while our ambition must evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities of today, tomorrow, and the future we are creating.

Feeding the world has long been intertwined with the challenge of a growing population. That trajectory is changing. The U.N. projects that the global population will peak later this century. Alongside these demographic transitions, rising diet-related disease, biodiversity loss, conflict, and climate risks are reshaping what we must deliver.

The call for a broader ambition has grown over the past two decades, gaining momentum with the rise of food systems approaches. In 2016, Lawrence Haddad and colleagues called for a global research agenda to shift from feeding the world to nourishing it.In 2021, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres identified Nourish All People as a priority for transforming food systems. More recently, calls for international cooperation have reinforced the urgency of healthy diets and sustainable food systems. This year’s World Food Day theme, “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow,” recognizes the power of science, traditional knowledge, ingenuity, and cooperation to transform food systems. What makes this moment extraordinary is that advances in science are expanding what we can imagine, discover, and achieve for humanity.

Nourishing the world expands our focus beyond how much food we produce to consider its quality, the health and dignity of those who produce and eat it, and the ecosystems that sustain it. When recently asked at the SDG Media Zone at UNGA81 what I had learned from communities around the world, my answer reflected what many have understood for generations: food is nourishment. What does it mean to make nourishment the measure of our ambition?

A critical measure for advancing nourishment is food quality. Food quality goes beyond calories and nutrients to encompass the molecular composition of food and the conditions in which it is grown, produced, processed, and prepared. Together, these shape its nutrient density, molecular diversity, biological activity, safety, flavor, and other sensory qualities. By connecting agriculture, the environment, and human health, food quality offers a way to measure and improve what our food systems deliver. Nourishment is greater than any single measure. It also depends on whether food is accessible, desirable, culturally meaningful, and produced in ways that sustain people, livelihoods, and ecosystems.

Nourishing the world is not an incremental ambition. We cannot feed people first and nourish them later. We already produce enough calories globally. Our ambition must be to develop creative solutions to ensure nourishing food reaches everyone. Consider the ingenuity of Mumbai’s dabbawalas, who have delivered millions of home-cooked meals across the city for generations, a remarkable but declining tradition.

Nourishment must be cultivated from the beginning, through the incredible edible biodiversity we conserve and cultivate, the crops and livestock we breed, the health of our soils and waters, and how food is grown, processed, and distributed. It must also shape the incentives, policies, and institutions that determine whose knowledge is valued, whose livelihoods are supported, and who can access nourishing food. This includes our ability to transform raw ingredients into nutritious, delicious, and culturally meaningful meals. Nourishment begets nourishment, creating a virtuous cycle across people, communities, and ecosystems. Rooted in dignity, this transformation will look different in every place.

In a Nature Food comment, my colleagues and I drew inspiration from mangroves, whose resilience depends on diverse, interconnected root systems. Food systems likewise depend on interconnected agricultural systems, economies, governance, diets, and knowledge. To change what our food systems deliver, we must transform their foundational roots: what they are designed to achieve, what they reward, and how success is measured. When we prioritize yields and nutrients, we risk overlooking the many dimensions of nourishment. What we measure shapes what we manage, and what we incentivize shapes what we produce.

Imagine agricultural landscapes where biodiversity flourishes alongside productive farms. Where agricultural success is measured not only by yield per hectare, but also by food quality and its potential to nourish people. Where farmers are rewarded for nourishing people and regenerating ecosystems. Where diverse food economies thrive, food waste declines, and innovations emerge. Where healthier diets help reduce the trillions of dollars in health and economic costs associated with poor diets, and healthier people realize their full potential. Where nourishing food is desirable, accessible, and rooted in culture and choice.

This vision must extend to every community across the planet. Nourishment is a universal ambition, and its expression must reflect the diversity of people and places. Realizing it requires cooperation across agriculture, environment, economic development, health, and education. This ambition must continue to evolve, drawing on the world’s diversity of knowledge, cultures, and capabilities. The world of 2050 will not be the world of 2100.

This World Food Day, I am honored to join global partners through The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) in advancing the ambition to nourish the world. Our contribution to this global call is to enable a growing global ecosystem to generate, integrate, and translate standardized molecular evidence on food and health that can accelerate food systems innovation to nourish people and the planet. Together, we are expanding the extraordinary frontier of food and health discovery.

Through PTFI, we are generating evidence across a remarkable spectrum of food systems innovations, from ancient crops grown using regenerative agricultural practices to entirely new classes of food products. We are collectively advancing our understanding of what this evidence means for human health. AI-enabled molecular modeling is helping generate hypotheses about how food molecules interact with human biology. We are connecting molecular evidence with existing epidemiological studies to investigate relationships between food quality and health, while conducting experimental and clinical research to test biological significance. However, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what remains to be discovered.

The path ahead calls for greater collective effort and investment to scale this work and translate emerging evidence into new approaches for characterizing and scoring food quality, as well as evidence-based recommendations and thresholds that can strengthen national and international food and health guidelines. Equally exciting is the opportunity to create entirely new markets and inspire a new generation of innovation. Imagine the possibilities unlocked by molecular evidence on food and health: creating new nourishing products, reimagining food procurement, and transforming how we understand, value, design, manage, and reward food systems.

Along this journey, we must recognize and value traditional knowledge while upholding Indigenous Data Sovereignty, equitable data access, and principles of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of the communities whose knowledge and resources make it possible.

Building on The Rockefeller Foundation’s pioneering investment in PTFI, alongside investments from other philanthropic partners, we have an extraordinary opportunity to meet the moment by mobilizing new and creative forms of capital to accelerate discovery and innovation for the future we want food to make possible.

Just as words expand our ambitions, new ambitions may call for words we have yet to imagine.

From surviving to thriving. From conserving ecosystems to regenerating them. From extending lifespan to fostering healthspan. From feeding the world to nourishing it.

This essay is part of Food Tank’s Flourish Series: Food and Health from Molecules to Systems, authored by Selena Ahmed, exploring how food connects us to the living world while asking what it means to flourish. For more in the series, click here.

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Greetings from Des Moines, Iowa. I’m here for the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogues, an annual gathering of people working to address hunger and improve food and agriculture systems.

And I have a confession—I love attending the World Food Prize.

I’ve been coming since the early 2010s. For a long time, part of what made it interesting was that there weren’t many people like me here—advocates for sustainable agriculture who wanted to talk about agroecology, biodiversity, how agriculture can be part of the solution to the climate crisis, and the power of farmers.

The Dialogues bring together scientists, academics, policymakers, and plenty of representatives of Big Ag. This year’s announced speakers include leaders from ADM, John Deere, and Corteva. I used to joke that I was one of the few people who could attend the World Food Prize one week and the Organic Trade Association’s annual meeting the next. And, to the Foundation’s credit, I’ve been invited to moderate side events and emcee a plenary session.

I also have some interesting memories.

One year, I was grabbing a drink at the hotel bar when two men invited me to join them. One was a scientist at a major agrochemical company and the other led a farmers and ranchers organization.

Why not sit and have a drink, I thought.

After some very quick pleasantries, they said I was using my Twitter account to criticize their organizations. For the record, I hadn’t. When I explained that, their response was, essentially, “Well, people like you do.” And I thought to myself, what do you mean, people like me?

I tried to explain that their assessment of me—and my work—was incorrect. The conversation went in circles, and I eventually hightailed it out of there.

By the way, I’m now friendly with both of them. I even made it onto one’s Christmas card list.

That experience stayed with me because it showed me how quickly we—all of us—can decide we already understand someone else based on preconceived notions. Sustainable agriculture advocate? We know what he thinks. Corporate scientist? We know what she believes. But we often don’t.

We need more good food and agriculture advocates at events like the Borlaug Dialogues. We need food is medicine leaders, climate activists, public health advocates, young farmer organizations, Indigenous food leaders, and farmworker advocates. Their experiences can really help shape the conversations that happen there. And to be fair, more and more of these folks are coming to the Borlaug Dialogues.

And all of us—Big Ag executives and agroecology advocates included—need to spend time in rooms where people disagree with us. We need to listen long enough to understand why we are on different ends of a very broad spectrum of what it will take to nourish both people and planet.

The issues we’re working on are complicated. If we want real food and agriculture transformation, we’re going to have to get uncomfortable.

Maybe not being accosted at the hotel bar uncomfortable. But uncomfortable enough to recognize that our comfort zones aren’t getting us very far.

Which brings me back to the Prize itself.

Often described as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture, it grew out of Norman Borlaug’s vision for recognizing people who improve the world’s food supply. Borlaug, a plant pathologist widely known as the father of the Green Revolution, helped transform wheat production and later directed the wheat program at CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

I see how the Foundation is evolving. Under the leadership of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Foundation CEO Tom Vilsack and President Mashal Husain, there are opportunities to broaden both the conversation and our understanding of who leads change. This year’s program includes actors Martin Sheen and Nick Offerman, as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education advocate Malala Yousafzai.

People whose work I admire, including Cary Fowler, Lawrence Haddad, and Mariangela Hungria, are also recipients of the World Food Prize. Their leadership is one of the reasons I think the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogues are important and why I keep coming back.

But I want the conversation to keep evolving, too. We need to ask more difficult questions about what food and agricultural progress looks like, whose knowledge informs it, who benefits, who has power, and who doesn’t.

For me, a Green Evolution—a term I stole from Bram Govaerts, the current Director General of CIMMYT—would mean putting farmers’ livelihoods, healthy soils, biodiversity, and nutritious diets at the center of how we measure success. And that requires looking around the room.

How many smallholder farmers, farmworkers, and grassroots organizers have the resources to travel to Des Moines, stay in a hotel, and take several days away from their work? Being invited to speak and being able to participate are different things. Even a waived registration fee doesn’t make it easy for someone to leave their farm.

And the World Food Prize Foundation has had support from agribusiness including ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, Syngenta, and the John Deere Foundation over the years. I don’t necessarily think that is bad as long as that support doesn’t influence which conversations happen, who is in the room, and who gets to be heard.

The history of the Prize also has me scratching my head sometimes. In addition to the folks I mentioned, in 2013, it honored Robert Fraley, then Monsanto’s chief technology officer, and Mary-Dell Chilton of Syngenta, alongside Marc Van Montagu, a molecular biologist, for their contributions to modern plant biotechnology. Monsanto itself didn’t win the Prize. But scientists working at major agribusiness companies did.

That history makes it reasonable to ask what kinds of innovation receive the greatest recognition. A breakthrough in a laboratory can change lives. So can organizing farmers, protecting seed diversity, restoring degraded land, or helping women gain control over their incomes.

This year’s laureate, Dutch food safety scientist Huub Lelieveld, is doing important work. The Foundation is recognizing his efforts to prevent foodborne illness and build international cooperation around food safety. Safe food is fundamental to food security, and that contribution deserves respect.

But I hope the Prize will direct more attention and resources toward leaders whose work is too often overlooked, particularly in the Global South.

The funding and international aid context makes that urgent. According to preliminary OECD figures, official development assistance from its Development Assistance Committee members and associates fell by 23.1 percent in real terms in 2025—the largest annual decline on record. That is a broad aid figure, but it highlights the funding pressures facing work on food security, agricultural development, and global health.

A 2025 study published in The Lancet projected that continued cuts to funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children younger than five.

The hunger consequences are equally alarming. In October 2025, the World Food Program warned that funding cuts from the United States and other donors could push 13.7 million people receiving its assistance from crisis into emergency levels of hunger, one step below famine on the five-level food insecurity scale.

And this year, I think the Prize missed a particularly powerful opportunity.

The United Nations designated 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer. It is an opportunity to recognize women’s contributions to food and agriculture systems and confront the barriers they face in accessing resources and opportunities.

The Dialogues are recognizing that moment with a panel called “What If Her Harvest Changes Everything?” The panel brings together April Hemmes of the United States, Jana Gäbert of Germany, Nelius Kariuki of Kenya, and Josselyn Veronica Vega Rojas of Ecuador. Their work spans farming, livestock and grassland management, vineyards, and agroecological producer organizing. I’m glad these women will be on the stage.

But the panel also raises a question for me. During the International Year of the Woman Farmer, why couldn’t one of these women—or another woman farmer with a demonstrated record of improving people’s lives—be the person we gather to honor with the World Food Prize?

I don’t know whether any of these panelists were nominated or considered. My question is about how widely we look for leadership, who we’re looking at, and what we recognize as valuable.

I think about Esther Penunia, secretary general of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development, who advocates for family farmers and stronger farmer organizations across Asia. Or Elizabeth Nsimadala, a Ugandan farmer and president of the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation, whose work helps farmers organize and advocate for themselves. Or Mariam Sow in Senegal, whose work with ENDA Pronat has helped advance agroecology and farmers’ knowledge.

These are the kinds of leaders I want us to look toward when we talk about transforming food systems. And the International Year of the Woman Farmer gives us an especially good reason to examine whether that work receives the recognition it deserves.

What would it mean for the world’s most prominent food and agriculture prize to put that kind of leadership at the center of its celebration?

That’s a conversation I want to have in Des Moines.

I’ll keep coming back to the World Food Prize because I believe conversations across differences matter. I’ve seen relationships change. I’m proud that over the years I have changed my own mind. And yes, sometimes a frustrating conversation at a hotel bar eventually leads to a Christmas card.

But I also want us to ask more of the institutions that bring us together.

Who gets invited? Who can afford to come? Whose knowledge counts? Who gets recognized? Who has the power?

I’m looking forward to listening this week. And I look forward to asking and being asked some uncomfortable questions.

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.

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The post On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg: Rethinking Who Gets a Seat at the Table—and Who Wins the World Food Prize appeared first on Food Tank.

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Food is Medicine movement is growing as community leaders connect food, nutrition, and health.

An estimated 15 percent of households in the city experience food insecurity, according to Feeding America. And the Philadelphia Department of Public Health reports that unhealthy food stores outnumber healthy options by ten to one.

Across the city, organizations are tackling these challenges, providing medically tailored meals, operating choice-based food pantries, and helping families afford nutritious groceries. Together, their work demonstrates how community-led solutions can address hunger while supporting health and well-being.

On October 27, the Food First Health Summit Philadelphia will bring together policymakers, health experts, farmers, food system innovators, and advocates to discuss these solutions and the future of Food is Medicine. Hosted by Food Tank, FareRX, AmeriHealth Caritas, and Temple University, the event will feature conversations and interactive breakout sessions exploring how Philadelphia and communities across the country can expand access to healthy food. Join us in person by registering here or tune in online by clicking here.

Ahead of the Summit, Food Tank is highlighting 13 organizations working to advance food and nutrition security across Philadelphia.

1. Bebashi — Transition To Hope

Since 1985 Bebashi — Transition To Hope has served as a full-service healthcare organization serving low-income individuals to improve their wellbeing. The organization runs the Food First Pantry, offering produce, meats, and nonperishable foods. Modeled after a grocery store, the pantry centers client-choice, allowing people to select the foods they need and want.

2. Caring for Friends

Caring for Friends is tackling both hunger and loneliness in the Philadelphia region. They provide food and friendship to seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities, by delivering a week’s worth of meals and visiting with clients. In their Caring Kitchen, they prepare sandwiches, soups, and snack bags for people facing homelessness.

3. FarmerJawn

This 128-acre farm wants to build a model of regenerative food production that’s built by and for underserved communities. Through storefronts, they provide access to fresh food grown without harmful chemicals. Their CornerJawn model of corner stores is designed to make healthy foods more accessible. “I want to make sure that nobody feels like nutrient density is above them,” Christa Barfield, FarmerJawn’s Founder, tells Food Tank. They also offer on-farm and in-school educational programming to help students and adults understand how and where their food comes from.

4. Feast of Justice

For two decades, Feast of Justice has been committed to ensuring that the Northeast Philadelphia community has access to nutritious food and other household goods. The volunteer-run food pantry operates two locations where families and individuals can pick up fresh produce, dairy, meat, baked and dry goods, and home essentials. Last year, they served close to 11,000 neighbors.

5. Food Connect

Food Connect works alongside local partners to deliver nutritious and culturally relevant foods in five regions across the United States, including the Greater Philadelphia area. Through a partnership with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, they offer home delivery for a Food as Medicine program to support patient health. They also work with Sharing Excess (also highlighted below), providing the transportation and delivery logistics that move surplus produce from the nonprofit’s warehouse to schools across the city.

6. MANNA

MANNA believes that healing starts with food. By providing medically tailored meals and nutrition education, they empower people facing serious illness to improve their health and quality of life. Thanks to their work, MANNA’s clients see reduced hospital visits, shorter stays, and an increased likelihood that they will be released to their homes instead of a long-term care facility. The organization is also part of the Food is Medicine Coalition, a national network advancing the Food is Medicine Movement.

7. Philabundance

Feeding America member Philabundance is combining short- and long-term solutions to curb hunger today and ultimately end it for good. They serve nine counties across Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey and work with over 300 community partners to distribute food to those in need. They also run initiatives to reduce food waste, increase access to nutritious meals, and support workforce development.

8. Philadelphia Food as Medicine Coalition

The Philadelphia Food as Medicine Coalition is a new coalition working at the intersection of food and health in Philadelphia. A growing network of advocates, food businesses, practitioners, they welcome community leaders to join them and help scale Food is Medicine solutions. The Food First Health Summit on October 27 represents the Coalition’s first convening, where the people and organizations taking part will help shape what it becomes.

9. Share Food Program

In 1986, Share Food Program started as a food co-op, offering low-cost items to the Philadelphia community. Today, they are one of the leading hunger relief organizations in the region and one of the largest independent food banks in the nation. Their Senior Food Box Program delivers a monthly box of groceries to qualifying seniors. The Philly Food Rescue project focuses on food recovery and donations. And at Nice Roots Farms, they grow fresh produce that they distribute to the community, pantry partners, and mutual aid networks.

10. Sharing Excess

When Evan Ehlers was a student at Drexel University in 2016, he began using his extra meal swipes to buy and give away meals in Philadelphia. The decision helped him realize that hunger wasn’t a problem of supply, but one of access. Two years later, he started Sharing Excess to overcome the barriers that keep perfectly good food from reaching people who need it most. Since the organization’s founding, they have rescued and redistributed more than 317 million pounds of food.

11. St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children Philadelphia

St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children was founded to support the health and well-being of young people served by the St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Their Farm to Families program helps families access low-cost, high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables. They also run My Family Kitchen, an eight-week program where elementary- and middle-school-aged children learn how to prepare simple, healthy, and affordable meals.

12. The Food Trust

The Food Trust takes a holistic approach to nutrition security to ensure everyone can access healthy, delicious food. The organization runs several programs to including the Healthy Corner Store Initiative, where they help small, independently owned grocery stores increase their offerings of fresh produce and other healthy items. And their Nutrition Incentives program helps to stretch eaters’ dollars to make nutritious foods more accessible and affordable.

13. The People’s Kitchen Philadelphia

Launched at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, The People’s Kitchen is a collaborative of chefs, students, and community members fighting for food sovereignty in Philadelphia. They help build a people-centered, inclusive model and relationship to food as they tackle systemic issues of poverty and hunger in the city. Today, they combine free nutritious meals, gardening, and food education to empower and transform communities.

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 courtesy of Tomas Martinez, Unsplash

The post 13 Organizations Building Health and Community in Philadelphia appeared first on Food Tank.

A new report from WWF highlights how we still have time to protect global biodiversity. While the decline in biodiversity worldwide shows no sign of slowing, according to a new WWF report, the organization believes that nature recovery is still within reach.

“Nature underpins our economies…It’s our life support system,” says Kirsten Schuijt, Director General of WWF International. But it “continues to be degraded at an alarming scale.”

The new Living Planet Report, which covers more than 35,000 populations and 5,700 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, shows that not all regions are affected evenly.

Biodiversity decline is highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by the African continent. But Andrew Terry, the Chief Conservation Officer for the Zoological Society of London, is careful to note that the results don’t mean regions like North America and Europe haven’t seen significant population decline. Rather, the biggest drop-off took place before 1970, when scientists established a baseline to measure against.

WWF points to food and agriculture systems as the largest cause of habitat loss and degradation. They’re also a major contributor to the climate crisis and the overexploitation of species. Together, these make the sector the leading driver of biodiversity decline.

“Habitat loss driven by agriculture is a threat to over 80 percent of all threatened terrestrial bird and mammal species,” Rebecca Shaw, Lead Author of the report and WWF’s Chief Scientist, tells Food Tank. “Overfishing is the leading cause of biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems and water extraction for agriculture.” She also adds that polluted runoff is responsible for 50 percent of all freshwater biodiversity loss.

But WWF still finds reason to remain hopeful. “Nature can rebound especially when we work together,” Schuijt says.

The report highlights the green sea turtle—they became the first marine turtle to ever be downgraded on a conservation list. After 50 years of collaborative efforts spanning 80 countries, it has been recategorized, moving from an Endangered species to one of Least Concern.

Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna are another example. Decades of overfishing brought populations to the brink of collapse. But concerted efforts to protect and replenish stocks mean that neither is considered threatened today.

“Targeted conservation action works, and it works really well, but it can’t overcome the threats to nature alone,” says Shaw. She argues that lessons from these projects can be taken and applied to address the root causes of biodiversity loss and drive systems change.

To reach a positive tipping point in food and agriculture systems, WWF argues that change is needed in three major areas. They call for the wide-scale adoption of nature-positive farming practices, a shift to healthy and sustainable diets, and a reduction in food loss and waste.

These changes “could have a dramatic impact on decreasing biodiversity loss,” Shaw tells Food Tank. “At the same time, it would also have extraordinary human health and economic benefits. The potential is huge.”

The transition to renewable energy sources must also continue to accelerate, the report states. Meanwhile funding must flow away from systems that harm ecosystems and toward those that regenerate them.

To make this transformation possible, WWF believes it is essential to uplift bright spots that prove efforts pay off.

“Hope is not an abstract thing. It’s based in science,” Schuijt says. And as long as people believe change is possible, she is adamant people will be willing to act —an attitude that is particularly important for the next generation. “Young people need to feel they can still contribute to a better future.”

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 courtesy of Shelley Pauls, Unsplash

The post WWF Shows Turning the Tide on Biodiversity Loss Is Still Possible appeared first on Food Tank.

When Albert Betoudji’s family—who are from Chad—visited him in Utah, he took them to his farm. They were surprised to see maize, squash, okra, and other familiar Central African crops growing so far from home.

“My mom was very, very happy,” says Betoudji. “They showed me [how to farm] at a young age, and I continue doing the same thing here in the United States.”

Growing up in Chad, Betoudji’s grandparents taught him to plant seeds and harvest crops when he was just five years old. He would later return home during school breaks to farm with his parents, learning to pay attention to and time planting around the seasons’ climates.

But in 1979, civil war forced Betoudji to leave Chad, and he traveled to West Africa in search of safety. He eventually settled in Burkina Faso, where he earned his high school diploma, studied management accounting at the University of Ouagadougou, and started teaching accounting. And in 1999, he emigrated to the United States.

For several years, Betoudji helped other refugee families settle into life in their new communities—everything from navigating public transportation systems to using American kitchens and toilets. Then in 2005, he began growing food again, starting simply with corn, tomatoes, and peppers in his backyard.

Betoudji soon became one of the first farmers in a Salt Lake County, Utah, community farming effort that would eventually become the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots program, which supports refugee and immigrant farmers as they build sustainable livelihoods through agriculture.

Betoudji was able to expand to growing crops he remembered from home, including okra and roselle, a type of hibiscus native to Africa that cannot fruit in Utah’s cooler climate, but he grows it for its edible leaves.

Eventually, with help from the New Roots staff, he began selling produce to stores and restaurants and at farmers’ markets. There, Betpoudji says, he and fellow refugee and immigrant farmers sell food while sharing the stories behind it—where they come from, how they arrived in the United States, and how to eat the crops they grow.

The income from farming can be limited, Betoudji says, but the work is meaningful: “Working at the farm makes me happy, because it is a physical activity; you use all your body.” This includes not only the arms and legs but the mind, Betoudji says, which “helped me with my mental and physical health.”

The farm also connects Betoudji to a community of people who, like him, have arrived in Utah from different places and backgrounds: “I came to Utah as a refugee, and I met other refugee families with different backgrounds, different cultures, but we farm together.”

For him, these relationships are at the heart of New Roots: The name reflects the experience of people who have left one place and built lives in another, bringing their knowledge, traditions, and foodways with them.

“We come from different backgrounds, but we farm together in the same place, and we grow food for family and for community,” says Betoudji.

Watch Betoudji’s story below and find others from our farmer storytelling events on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life.

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.

The post For Refugees in Utah, Farming Is a Connection to Home appeared first on Food Tank.

Three words can change the world!

“Food is medicine” is a complete sentence. It’s an unequivocally true statement. And it’s a movement that can achieve so much more than many of us even realize.

In a couple weeks, our Food First Health Summit in Philadelphia is exploring the wide range of collaboration, legislation, and creative innovation that prioritizes our dietary well-being and illuminates the ways food systems nourish our bodies and our societies at large.

I hope you’ll join us at 2:00PM ET on Tuesday, October 27 (CLICK HERE or livestream at FoodTank.com)—in partnership with FareRx and the College of Public Health at Temple University at WHYY-NPR Studios’ Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons—for discussions with food systems leaders, policymakers, community organizers, health practitioners, and more to launch long-term solutions.

“Philly’s food as medicine leaders are coming together, and the country should be paying attention,” says Mike Cangi, Founder and CEO of FareRx. “We’re using that momentum to launch the Philadelphia Food Is Medicine Coalition, giving this work a bigger platform and creating more ways to work together. This is Philadelphia’s chance to show what a city can accomplish when it puts food and health first.”

The Food Is Medicine movement sits at the crossroads of nutrition security, local agriculture, and healthcare. Some initiatives focus on social well-being through food access and education; others are rooted in clinical care with programs including produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals.

And it works: When we eat with our well-being in mind, our health improves. The healthcare cost savings from medically tailored meals alone to be around US$23.7 billion, according to research from the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

Here’s a peek at the amazing lineup of speakers, alphabetically by last name, who are joining us in Philadelphia: Val Arkoosh, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services; Mike Cangi, FareRx; Sue Daugherty, MANNA; Rep. Madeleine Dean, U.S. House of Representatives; Lauren Eberly, University of Pennsylvania and Indian Health Service, Navajo Nation; Evan Ehlers, Sharing Excess; Beatrice Forman, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Freeway, Philadelphia-Based Rapper and Food for Health Advocate; Steven Jennings, Ahold Delhaize USA; Loree D. Jones Brown, Philabundance; Julia Koprak, The Food Trust; Jenn Ladd, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Karen Lin, Temple University; Briana Mills-Walker, FarmerJawn; Kae Lani Palmisano, Philadelphia Magazine; Chris Rabb, Pennsylvania House of Representatives; Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, U.S. House of Representatives; Rep. Lloyd Smucker, U.S. House of Representatives; Maiken Scott, WHYY; Julia Weatherly, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service; and more to be announced soon!

We’re so proud to help showcase the ways Philadelphia is leading the charge toward a better food system. Food rescue organization Sharing Excess is proof that committed young people can make meaningful change. With medically tailored meals and other interventions, MANNA and FareRX are showing how Food is Medicine is a sustainable, transformative model. And inspiring organizations like Philabundance and The Food Trust are building food security and food access through upcycling, cooking education, and other creative approaches.

“Philadelphia is home to an incredibly rich and diverse food culture. The largest possible umbrella is needed to include all of the companies, community groups, and individuals dedicated to providing the healthiest of foods to the citizens of the city and region,” says David B. Sarwer, Ph.D., Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the College of Public Health at Temple University. “The time is right to bring all of the players together to move the Food is Medicine agenda forward in Philadelphia to improve the health and well-being of our citizens.”

HERE is the link one more time to grab your FREE ticket before seating fills up for good! And for Food Tankers who don’t live in or near Philadelphia, plan to visit FoodTank.com at 2:00PM ET on Tuesday, October 27 to join our livestream.

(Want to learn more about Food is Medicine? Check out our “Food Tank Explains” column about it, and tune in to recent episodes of our Food Talk podcast HERE. You can also be part of even more discussions about it at our 2nd Annual Food and Agriculture Policy Summit Week in Washington, D.C., later this year!)

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 courtesy of Mariana Medvedeva, Unsplash

The post You’re Invited: What Can We Achieve When We Put Food First For Health? appeared first on Food Tank.

The Washington D.C.-based organization FRESHFARM is working to strengthen food access, support local farmers, and improve food education in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

The nonprofit runs the third-largest farmers market network in the country as well as a food hub, “which is really all about providing farmers, especially small and mid-sized farmers, an opportunity to get into the wholesale market,” Cat Oakar, FRESHFARM’s Executive Director tells Food Tank. This allows nonprofits the ability to purchase fresh, local produce, “which they’re often shut out of.”

To connect more eaters with healthy food, the organization also operates two extensive food access programs, Produce Plus and FreshMatch, which offer qualifying shoppers additional dollars to spend at farmers markets. 

Oakar believes these programs are essential, arguing that there should be more investment and support to help families buy and prepare fresh produce. But, she is seeing the opposite, with federal cuts affecting initiatives like Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed). 

The loss of funding is particularly confusing to Oakar when the Trump-Vance Administration is doing so well to bring the link between food and health into national conversations, says Oakar, who previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Public Health and Disparities under the Biden-Harris Administration. “They’re succeeding “in a way that, frankly, we…couldn’t do.” But she believes the actions of the federal government represent a contradiction. 

“If we really want to make people healthy, investing in the food system, investing in local farmers, investing in programs that have been cut is the way to make a healthier society,” she tells Food Tank. “It’s the way to make a more resilient, stronger food system.”

The idea of building a healthier society is one that FRESHFARM takes seriously. Farmers markets aren’t just connecting people to fresh produce, Oakar explains. They are also “essential community infrastructure” that serve as economic engines and gathering places. “Our farmers markets are something that are so powerful and such a beautiful and necessary part of strong, resilient communities.”

Listen to the full conversation with Cat Oakar on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear about Oakar’s transition from the White House to FRESHFARM, the challenges facing local farmers, and how the organization is getting students excited about food systems. 

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 courtesy of Shelley Pauls, Unsplash

The post Building Stronger Communities Through Farmers Markets appeared first on Food Tank.

It’s early morning outside Perryville, Arkansas. A scissor-tailed flycatcher is perched on the fence, cattle are grazing in the bottoms, and Sam Noble begins her day in the chicken brooder at the Heifer Center for Regenerative Agriculture.

There is nothing unusual about a woman starting her day this way. Women have always farmed. They have raised livestock, managed farms, saved seed, sold food and cared for the land. What has changed is that we are finally getting better at seeing them.

That visibility matters.

Sam is Heifer USA’s Poultry Coordinator, and she is part of a growing number of women farmers and ranchers across the United States. Since 2002, the percentage of women producers has increased steadily. According to the USDA, women represent over 36 percent of all U.S. producers.

Some of that increase is about how we count. In 2012, the USDA changed the way it collected census information, allowing farms to identify more than one primary operator. That simple change made women’s contributions more visible in the official numbers.

But the numbers are catching up to something many of us working in agriculture have known for a long time: women are already doing the work… and have been doing so for a long time.

Being counted is one thing. Being recognized is another. Even today, Sam and the other women livestock managers at Heifer USA encounter the assumptions that come with being women farmers. Sam’s response isn’t to try to prove that she can farm like a man.

“To me, being a woman farmer doesn’t mean proving that I can farm like a man. It means I get to define what a good farmer looks like.”

Agriculture doesn’t need women to change who they are. The world needs to make room for different ways of knowing, different approaches to managing land and livestock, and different concepts of what a successful farm looks like.

The critical role rural women play in agriculture is evident across the Americas, and it is important to hear their voices. We recently spoke with women farmers in parts of Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico.

Their stories are different because their circumstances are different. But the common threads and challenges are there. Access to land and markets, the effects of a changing climate, the importance of family and community. These women are making their way even if the systems around them don’t make it easy.

In the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Mexico, land is never just land. Yumara Salas Ramírez is helping raise the visibility of women coffee producers. Chiapas produces 41 percent of Mexico’s coffee, but women hold only about a quarter of the land rights. Women also face challenges that range from sexism and violence to the effects of a changing climate.

At the Sierra Azul Cooperative, Yumara is the first woman to serve as the cooperative’s secretary and handles incoming green coffee. But she also works with women producers to market coffee under their own brand.

Yumara remains connected to the land and to the knowledge passed down through her family: “Every time we work with coffee, we reflect what we were taught and keep a family tradition alive.”

On the Galápagos Islands, part of Ecuador, over half of the food consumed is shipped in from the mainland. For an ecosystem as fragile as the Galápagos, that dependence creates its own problems, including the introduction of invasive plants and pests.

María Espinoza is using agroecological methods to raise livestock and grow crops for local markets on land cleared of invasive blackberry bushes. She and other farmers have increased the percentage of locally sourced food available at their market from 10 percent to 40 percent since 2019. It is an example of how local food production can play multiple roles: providing income and strengthening food sovereignty.

María doesn’t pretend the work is easy: “The most difficult part? There isn’t one. With dedication, you just have to overcome the difficult challenges.”

The challenges these women face vary, but one issue affects them all: a changing climate. Women farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. They often have fewer resources available during droughts, extreme weather or other disruptions.

Milexy Rodriguez, a farmer in El Nance, Honduras, lost 15 of her cattle during a drought in 2024. It was a call to action to build a more resilient livelihood. With support from a community savings group, she drilled a well and diversified her production, growing chili peppers and keeping bees.

Milexy’s experience is a reminder that resilience isn’t some abstract concept. It may be a well, or another crop, but sometimes resilience is challenging assumptions about who belongs in agriculture.

“Many people thought that a woman couldn’t manage a cattle farm. However, with consistent work, I’ve proven that it is possible.”

Working at the Heifer Center for Regenerative Agriculture, I get to see women like Sam doing this work every day. I see it in the way our entire livestock team cares for the animals, makes land-use decisions, and tries new things.

And I see something else, too.

The women I know in agriculture aren’t waiting for someone to tell them they belong. They are already doing the work. That is what struck me as I learned more about these women across the Americas. All of our farms and lives vary, but the underlying questions are familiar.

How do we care for the land and still make a living?

How do we pass knowledge on to the next generation?

How do we build communities and food systems that can withstand difficult times?

For too long, women have had to answer these questions while also proving that they belong at the table. The most important change is that we are noticing what has been happening all along. Women have been farming, ranching, building markets, raising families and caring for the land for generations.

The numbers are finally catching up with that reality. And that is a good thing. If we are serious about building resilient farms and food systems, we need the knowledge, experience and leadership of everyone.

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Photo courtesy of Lys Arango / Heifer International

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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.

Water security refers to sustainable access to safe, affordable, and reliable water to support human well-being, livelihoods, economic development, and healthy ecosystems. It encompasses not only available water, but also water quality, accessibility, affordability, and reliability.

Although water covers approximately 71 percent of Earth’s surface, only about 3 percent is freshwater, and less than 1 percent is readily accessible for human use. Agriculture accounts for approximately 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals, followed by industry at 15 percent and domestic and municipal uses at 13 percent.

In a January 2026 report, the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) warned that the term “water crisis” no longer adequately describes the state of global freshwater resources. The researchers conclude that the world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy,” in which prolonged overuse has depleted and damaged freshwater systems beyond realistic prospects of full recovery.

“The term “water crisis” implies a temporary shock and deviation from the baseline,” Kaveh Madani, Director of the UNU-INWEH and author of the report, tells Food Tank. “But we are dealing with a new normal—a post-crisis state of failure.”

The report estimates that approximately 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water. According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), around 4 billion people experience severe water stress for at least one month each year.

Global freshwater withdrawals have more than doubled since 1960, as populations, economies, and agricultural production have expanded. And by 2050 the world is projected to demand 20 to 25 percent more water. WRI projects that the number of people experiencing severe water scarcity could rise by 40 percent by the end of the century.

According to the UNU-INWEH, water withdrawals in many river basins and aquifers have exceeded natural replenishment rates for decades. This prolonged overuse has depleted groundwater reserves and damaged rivers, lakes, wetlands, and other freshwater systems, sometimes beyond realistic prospects of full recovery.

Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are affecting water availability worldwide. Higher temperatures increase evaporation, while shifting rainfall patterns contribute to more severe droughts and flooding in many regions.

Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to water shortages, which can reduce crop yields, disrupt livestock production, and threaten the livelihoods of farmers and agricultural workers. These disruptions can also reduce food availability and contribute to higher prices, particularly in regions where agriculture supports a large share of employment.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), water insecurity disproportionately affects low-income communities and smallholder farmers, who often lack the resources to secure alternative water supplies or adapt to prolonged shortages.

Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation also threatens public health. According to the World Health Organization, contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrheal diseases, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.

And water shortages can prevent households from meeting basic needs and force changes in daily activities, including food preparation and dietary choices. Tools like the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales measure how water insecurity affects daily life, evaluating whether households have had to change what they eat, go to sleep thirsty, or forgo basic activities because of inadequate water access.

FAO calls for more efficient agricultural water use, alongside policies that balance the needs of farmers, communities, industries, and ecosystems. Measures such as improved irrigation, rainwater harvesting, and soil moisture conservation can help farmers maintain production while reducing pressure on water supplies.

But the UNU-INWEH warns that efficiency improvements alone are insufficient where water use exceeds sustainable limits. Its 2026 report calls for stronger governance, enforceable limits on withdrawals, and protection of freshwater ecosystems, supported by cooperation within and across national borders.

In a Food Tank op-ed, Lee Recht, Founder of Table of Choices, Hosni Ghedira, Chair of MENA2050’s Water Security Committee, and Hakima El Haite, Chair of MENA2050’s Climate Action Committee, emphasize the need for regional cooperation, noting that water resources, food systems, and energy infrastructure are interconnected across national borders. They highlight emerging solutions in the Middle East and North Africa, including renewable-powered desalination and farming practices that improve water retention, and call for greater investment to expand their use.

“Water is not a resource like any other. It is the crux of human security, global food systems, biodiversity, public health, and peace,” Madani tells Food Tank.

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Photo courtesy of Nishaan Ahmed, Unsplash

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This Fall, Food Tank is highlighting 24 books that help us understand how food connects us to our communities, cultural heritage, and the natural world. Food is Medicine by Dariush Mozaffarian and Food Sense by Christopher Gardner both tackle pressing questions that will help us create systems that support mental and physical wellbeing. In Sugar Coated, Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland examine American breakfast cereals to expose the strategies big food companies have used to influence food policy and public health. And in Cooking Thai, award-winning chef Pim Techamuanvivit broadens readers’ understanding of Thai cuisine with 100 of her best recipes. Together, these titles offer inspiration and insights for creating a sustainable, more equitable food future.

1. A Practical Farmer’s Journey: A History of Community, Stewardship, and Resilience by Ronald L. Rosmann

More than 60 percent of Iowa farmland is dedicated to corn and soybean, according to research from Iowa State University. But the state is also home to another story—one of transformation. Ronald L. Rosmann traces the history of agriculture in Iowa, from when farming offered families promise and hope to the struggles driven by vertical integration. The book closes with a message of optimism, highlighting how Iowa’s farmers are rebuilding rural communities, tackling climate change, and restoring the unfulfilled potential of rural America.

2. All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein

The San Francisco Chronicle calls James Beard Award-winning Kwame Onwuachi “the most important chef in America.” In his new cookbook, he shares recipes that bring together unexpected flavors in dishes that can be enjoyed for any occasion and any time of day. It covers everything from breakfast to late night snacks, with dishes such as Corn Milk French Toast, Curried Chicken Patties, Brussels Sprout Suya, and Sticky Toffee Pudding.

3. Black Farm Boys: The Untold Story of the New Farmers of America by Bobby J. Smith II

Black Farm Boys unearths the history of New Farmers of America, the first—and overlooked—national organization for Black boys studying agriculture in segregated high schools. Sociologist Bobby J. Smith II details the growth of the NFA, its influence, and its swift decline as it was overtaken by the predominantly white Future Farmers of America. The book confronts the question of how an organization with 55,000 members at its peak was nearly forgotten from history in the United States.

4. Black Farmers in America: Fighting for an Equitable Food System by Mya O. Price

Mya O. Price’s research highlights how systems of oppression have shaped the experiences of Black farmers in the United States from slavery to the present day. It also uncovers the ways they are overcoming these barriers. Black Farmers in America brings these pieces together, grounding readers in history. And it offers case studies that show how models of restorative justice, cooperative farming, and urban agriculture are creating opportunities for Black food producers to build power and resilience.

5. Captive Consumers: Hunger, Violence, and Inequality in American Prison Food by Chin Jou

Captive Consumers questions assumptions about what a food system inside prisons can—and should—look like. Drawing from historical records and prison newspapers, author Chin Jou documents the challenges incarcerated people face, from chronic hunger to unmet dietary needs. She argues that these conditions perpetuate violence and endanger those inside these institutions, ultimately making the case for reform that centers dignity and humanity.

6. Cooking Thai: Heritage and Modern Recipes from My Kitchen Notebooks by Pim Techamuanvivit with Andrea Nguyen

When Pim Techamuanvivit moved to the United States from Bangkok, she encountered assumptions around Thai food she was eager to change. In response, the award-winning chef opened multiple restaurants to celebrate the richness and diversity of her culinary heritage. In Cooking Thai, Techamuanvivit brings together 100 of her best recipes like Massaman Curry with Beef Cheeks and a Grilled Shrimp and Lychee Salad, while providing tips to help cooks source ingredients at home.

7. Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard by Sonali Menezes

It can be challenging to feed yourself during difficult times. That’s what artist Sonali Menezes realized when she was struggling with mental illness and disordered eating. It drove her to look for easy, delicious ways to stay nourished, leaning into approaches that were non-judgmental, anti-diet, and approachable. In Depression Cooking, Menezes combines recipes, memoir, and illustrations to share lessons from these hard times. It serves as a guide to caring for yourself when you’re navigating grief, unemployment, or the stress of becoming a new parent.

8. Famine in World History by R. Douglas Hurt

Douglas Hurt offers an overview of famines throughout history, from antiquity to the present day. While acknowledging that not all cases are alike, he points to patterns that emerge in examples from western Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Hurt also delves into the roles that policy and war play, how environmental issues intersect with hunger crises, and what happens to communities after famines end.

9. Food Heritage: Critical Perspectives edited by Loïc Bienassis and Fabio Parasecoli

“Does food heritage exist?” That’s the question historian Loïc Bienassis opens with in his introduction to this new anthology. The chapters that follow aim to understand what food heritage means and the ways that foods and food practices are defined, recognized, and mobilized as heritage. To unpack these questions, chapters span the globe, drawing on case studies from countries including Brazil, Catalonia, Japan, and Morocco.

10. Food Is Medicine: Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System by Dariush Mozaffarian (forthcoming October 20)

“Being a healthy American adult is an anomaly,” cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian tells Food Tank. He believes food systems represent the biggest challenges facing humanity today. As Director of the Food is Medicine Institute, Mozaffarian says, “we really can actually fix our food system in a really short amount of time.” In Food Is Medicine, he explains the decisions that have shaped food systems today and offers a blueprint to help policymakers, physicians, communities, and individual eaters drive a nutrition revolution.

11. Food Sense: What to Eat and Why by Christopher Gardner

In Food Sense, nutrition scientist Christopher Gardner tackles myths about diet and health on to eaters make more informed choices about the food they put on their plates. He acknowledges that health claims can be confusing and contradictory, and he hopes to use his book to cut through the noise. His book addresses questions on everything from seed oils to plant-based proteins while pointing readers to some of his favorite recipes that support long-term health.

12. Fundamentals of Flavor: 100 Recipes for the Science of Better Cooking by Nik Sharma

Former molecular biologist Nik Sharma wanted to help eaters make delicious meals at home while understanding the science behind their food. The result is Fundamentals of Flavor, a cookbook containing 100 recipes, from Caramelized Shallot and Feta-Labneh Dip to Icelandic Rye Bread, that are accessible yet rich in flavor. It’s also filled with information on how different cooking techniques bring out the most in every dish.

13. Foods of La Frontera: Recipes and New Taste Frontiers from Both Sides of the Border by Pati Jinich

In Foods of La Frontera, Pati Jinich offers 125 recipes to celebrate the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Rather than calling it the border, Jinich thinks about it as a frontier—a place of beginnings, opportunity, and rich, varied cultures. Dishes such as Tamales de Frijol con Chile Verde y Queso (Mashed Bean, Green Chile, and Cheese Tamales) and Enchiladas Navideñas de Pollo (Christmas Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas) demonstrate that the cuisine is more than traditional Tex-Mex, encompassing cooking styles and ingredients from across Mexico.

14. Happy Snacking, Don’t Die! Foraging and Vegan Recipes with Black Forager by Alexis Nikole Nelson

Alexis Nikole Nelson, also known as BlackForager on social media, uses her platform to educate others on foraging and cooking wild foods. In Happy Snacking, Don’t Die!—part foraging guide and part plant-based cookbook—Nelson shares her love for the outdoors and encourages people to safely embrace the abundance that surrounds them. Recipes include Magnolia Bud Tea, Stuffed Morels, and Potato Mugwort Pancakes.

15. How to Cook Everything Vegan: Build on the Basics for Exciting Plant-Based Meals by Mark Bittman

In the latest installment of the How to Cook Everything series, Mark Bittman makes plant-based cooking accessible and craveable. This collection of straightforward recipes covers everything from paellas and dumplings to ice cream and cookies. Bittman also includes technique and ingredient guides to help home cooks feel more comfortable and empowered in the kitchen.

16. Medicine for All People: Science and Ancient Wisdom for Revolutionary Healing by Geeta Maker-Clark

Integrative medicine physician Geeta Maker-Clark learned at an early age that food is medicine. But many people, she knows, didn’t have the experience. Even many doctors go without adequate nutrition training. “Food got pushed out of medical education,” Maker-Clark tells Food Tank. Medicine for All People encourages readers to embrace the healing properties of food, along with other medicines of the Earth, community, and the spirit that are ancient and urgently relevant. It also helps readers build their own kitchen apothecary, use breathwork to calm the mind, and integrate dance meditation into daily life.

17. Plant Teachings from My Auntie: Gathering Coast Salish Plants for Medicine, Textiles, Nourishment, and Ceremony by C’tasi:a, Geraldine Manson and Nancy Turner

Plant Teachings from My Auntie introduces readers to herbal remedies found in the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. Geraldine Manson (C’tasi:a), a Snuneymuxw Elder and Traditional Knowledge Keeper, shares lessons from her aunt, Dr. Ellen White, to foster cultural understanding and ecological responsibility. Throughout the book are detailed descriptions of 65 different species and more than 130 beautiful color photographs to support accurate plant identification.

18. Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed by Michael Marx

Corporations hold immense power that too often goes unchecked by government, leading to pollution, dangerous work environments, and defective or harmful products. In Reining in the Bulls, Michael Marx offers advocates practical guidance to challenge corporate abuses. Drawing from his experience pressuring companies to change their ways, he helps advocates understand, plan, and execute effective campaigns that can build more equitable and just systems.

19. Saved by Seeds: Embracing Diversity, Adaptation and Resilience by Chris Smith

In Saved by Seeds, Utopian Seed Project Founder Chris Smith makes the case for seed diversity. He explains how seed saving can build resilience, unpacks the beliefs holding us back, and offers guidance for farmers and gardeners of all backgrounds to play an active role in building adaptive, dynamic food systems. The book shows that seed saving isn’t just a practice of the past, but one that is still highly relevant and necessary to carry us into the future.

20. Seeding Hope: What Plants Teach Us About Being Human by Jack Algiere

As Director of Agroecology at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Jack Algiere has dedicated his career to scaling farming practices rooted in land stewardship, innovation, and community. In Seeding Hope, Algiere shares the lessons that he has learned along the way, highlighting how deeply connected humans are to the world around them. As Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns says, the book is ultimately “a portrait of the natural world as teacher, and an ethic for how to live, drawn from the ground up.”

21. Sugar Coated: Unboxing the Hidden Forces Shaping America’s Favorite Breakfast Food by Marion Nestle and Lisa Sutherland

Sugar Coated by nutritionist Marion Nestle and former Kellogg executive Lisa Sutherland, reveals the influence American cereal companies have on food policy and public health. The book digs into marketing tactics, from ads targeting children to health claims, that companies have employed to make these sugary foods the breakfast staple they are today. When did it become okay to feed kids vitamin-supplemented cookies for breakfast, “which is basically what kids’ cereals are?” Nestle asks.

22. Sustainable Agriculture in Ukraine: From Resource-Intensive Farming to Agroecological Systems by Sergiusz Pimenow, Olena Pimenowa, and Lubov Moldavan

Sustainable Agriculture in Ukraine helps readers understand how the country can transition to farming systems that are more environmentally sound and resilient—and why this matters for global food security. Economists Sergiusz Pimenow, Olena Pimenowa, and Lubov Moldavan break down the evolution of Ukrainian agriculture and how it fits into global food systems, while considering the trajectory of post-war recovery and offering a roadmap for a more sustainable future.

23. The Ecology of Food: Sustainable Food Systems and Diets edited by Nicolas Bricas, Damien Conaré, and Marie Walser

The Ecology of Food marks the 10th anniversary of the UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems, a platform created to increase and disseminate academic knowledge on world food systems. Broken into five parts, the anthology considers food as relationships, the dynamics of contemporary food systems, food and ecology, guiding principles of sustainable food systems, and the transformation of food systems. Together, these essays offer a well-rounded introduction to contemporary issues in food, farming, and nutrition.

24. Wine Liberated: The Ecological Revolution and the Vintners Inspiring Change by Adam Huss

Just a few grape varieties dominate the wine market today, a fact that prompted winemaker Adam Huss to ask if it’s possible to build something different. Several years ago, he launched the podcast “Beyond Organic Wine” to learn from producers who are rethinking wine. Now, in Wine Liberated, he takes a deeper dive into these questions to understand what it will take to transform the wine industry into one that is environmentally sustainable, diverse, and more delicious.

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.

The post Food Tank’s Fall 2026 Reading List appeared first on Food Tank.

As the oil blockade cripples Cuba’s farms and food supply, the island is becoming a stark preview of what happens when fossil-fuel dependent agriculture collides with geopolitical and climate instability, and a powerful illustration of why an agroecological transition is becoming increasingly necessary.

In recent months, scenes from Cuba have become increasingly stark as access to energy, food, and water has become a daily struggle for most. The immediate trigger is fuel scarcity resulting from the de facto oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration since January 2026. But conditions on the island have been deteriorating for years, exacerbated by the decades-long blockade by the United States coupled with domestic structural challenges. Cuba, like most countries, depends heavily on imported oil to power its electricity grid, transport goods, and sustain its food system.

For ordinary Cubans, the consequences are dire. The state rationing system, once a pillar of food security, now covers only a small fraction of household needs. Market alternatives exist, but inflation has pushed them beyond the reach of many households. The average monthly wage is roughly US$20; a carton of eggs can cost half that. Food insecurity and malnutrition are no longer isolated concerns. They are becoming widespread.

Domestic food production has fallen for years. Staples such as rice, maize, and beans remain well below national demand. Farmers face acute shortages of diesel, fertilizer, animal feed, and spare parts. The consequences ripple across the food chain: land goes unploughed, irrigation systems sit idle, harvests are delayed, transport networks seize up, and food spoils before reaching consumers.

Today’s crisis is not a temporary disruption. It is part of a structural polycrisis in which energy scarcity, economic contraction, climate instability, and demographic decline reinforce one another. Cuba’s food system is not simply experiencing a bad moment. It is confronting the limits of fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture in an era of permanent instability.

Many proposed solutions—import more food, revive export-oriented industrial agriculture, restore fuel flows—remain trapped within the same agricultural paradigm that exposes it to crisis. They offer relief, but not resilience.

But Cuba’s story is not only one of crisis. It is also one of adaptation and resilience—and of a path not fully taken.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Cuba abruptly lost access to fuel, fertilizers, and imported food. In response, the country embarked on an ambitious agroecological transformation.

Land was redistributed to cooperatives and family farmers who now manage more than 70 percent of agricultural land. Urban gardens spread through cities. Farmer-to-farmer networks trained more than 200,000 farming families in agroecological methods.

For a time, Cuba became a global symbol of what post-fossil-fuel agriculture might look like.

However, the transition remained incomplete.

As economic conditions improved intermittently, policymakers often shifted back toward conventional industrial agriculture. Agroecology was never fully institutionalized as the foundation of the food system. Instead, it was treated as an emergency substitute: embraced in crisis, sidelined in recovery.

That cyclical approach left Cuba with an unfinished transformation—and a food system still deeply vulnerable to external shocks.

Today, the constraints facing all types of farmers are immense. Beyond fuel shortages, they lack tools, seeds, equipment, refrigeration, processing facilities, and reliable transportation. Credit is scarce. Decades of outmigration have weakened the social fabric of rural areas. Bureaucratic hurdles remain high, and a centralized economy, coupled with state monopolies, leads to inefficiencies and stifles innovation. An estimated 40 percent of food produced in Cuba is lost before reaching consumers due to failures in harvesting, storage, transport, and processing.

And yet the productive potential remains considerable.

Critics often dismiss agroecology as idealistic or insufficiently productive. Yet the evidence increasingly points the other way. Global governance institutions now recognize agroecology as a comprehensive solution that goes beyond organic farming to redesign food systems around biodiversity, local knowledge, human health, and democratic governance, aiming to build resilience, equity, and local control rather than simply growing food differently.

Diversified agroecological farms in Cuba can produce around 7 tons of nutritious food per hectare annually—enough to meet the caloric and protein needs of roughly eight people. Scaling such systems across 200,000 family farms—covering just over two million hectares of the more than six million hectares of arable land—could enable Cuba to meet its national food requirements, with potential surpluses for tourism and export.

Recent reforms suggest renewed support for local agroecological food systems. Cuba’s 2022 Food Sovereignty Law and 2025 Agroecology Decree provide a framework for decentralizing food governance and supporting municipal food planning. But implementation remains uneven. After decades of centralized administration, many local governments lack the capacity and institutional culture needed to manage participatory, territorial food systems.

In June 2026, the government approved a package of 176 economic measures that open much of the economy to private actors. In July, it followed with a new Agricultural and Forestry Land Law that allows land rights to be inherited and transferred and opens idle state land to private businesses and foreign investors. Other new regulations give cooperatives the right to import inputs, export directly, set their own prices, form second-tier cooperatives, and partner with foreign investors. Decree-Law 161/2026 ends mandatory state intermediaries, lets supply and demand set prices, and creates an Agricultural Bank to finance the sector.

For cooperatives and family farmers, these changes could bring autonomy, fairer prices, access to credit, and secure land tenure. Second-tier cooperatives could pool resources for shared infrastructure, credit, and markets. But none of these measures explicitly prioritize agroecology. Without safeguards, they could concentrate land and capital in the hands of larger commercial players and pull production toward export and tourism markets instead of local food needs.

If agroecology is to move beyond rhetoric, it will require sustained investment in seed systems, irrigation systems, decentralized biofertilizer production, small- and medium-scale storage and processing facilities, transportation infrastructure, and renewable energy (solar, biodigesters, and wind turbines).

It will also require supporting the social infrastructure of transformation—farmer training, cooperative management, peer-learning networks, participatory governance, and local enterprises. And a rebalancing of roles across public institutions, new non-state actors, and civil society—each of which has a part to play in rebuilding a more resilient food system.

Funding that transition will require more than state spending or donor aid. Cuba must diversify its financing ecosystem – drawing on diaspora investment, impact capital, justice-oriented funds, climate finance, and local development banking alongside public and multilateral funds. But attracting that investment will require clearer rules, less bureaucracy, and more predictable economic governance. And of course, an end to the debilitating web of unilateral coercive measures imposed by the US for more than 60 years.

Done well, such investment could create rural jobs, reduce food waste, strengthen local economies, lower import dependence, and improve climate resilience—all while keeping wealth circulating within communities rather than flowing outward.

The lesson is clear. In a world of tightening constraints, resilience will not come from securing more oil and fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides. It will come from needing less of it.

For Cuba, that means embracing a transition already underway within its own agricultural traditions: toward agroecology, toward local production, and ultimately toward food sovereignty grounded in the strength of local ecosystems and communities.

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 courtesy of Leidy Casimiro

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SeaShare is working to transform donations from the fishing industry into meaningful nourishment for food banks across the United States. They are the only nonprofit dedicated solely to putting fresh seafood on the tables of families in need.

Through a nationwide network of fishers, processors, and distribution partners, donated seafood is helping to close the protein gap at food banks across the country. Donations span salmon and halibut to Alaska pollock, Pacific white shrimp, rockfish, catfish, and tilapia.

In all stages of life, from pregnancy to childhood to adulthood, there is strong evidence for health benefits of consuming seafood, reports the World Health Organization. Fish and other seafood can be excellent sources of protein, vitamins, and micronutrients. Seafood consumption during pregnancy is linked to improved birth outcomes, and adults who eat seafood regularly face lower risks of cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

A study in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics finds that the nutritional quality of donated food parcels in food banks is inconsistent. Food available at points of access like food banks often falls short of national dietary recommendations across developed countries, including the U.S.

“Protein can be expensive, and seafood is one of the more expensive forms of protein,” SeaShare’s Executive Director Hannah Lindoff tells Food Tank. “In general, protein makes up only about 2 percent of donations to food banks and is in huge demand.”

Since its founding 31 years ago, SeaShare has delivered more than 270 million seafood servings to food banks and feeding centers across the country. The organization grew out of the pollock industry in Alaska, where fishers chose to donate bycatch—which refers to fish that cannot be legally sold—rather than let it go to waste.

Relationship building and tax incentives have since encouraged regular donations of first-run, marketable seafood from the fishing and processing industry. Today, bycatch makes up just 8 percent of SeaShare’s total donations.

The nonprofit also works to ensure culturally relevant foods reach the right communities. Lindoff points to northern Washington as an example. “We have some surimi flake coming in so we reached out to an agency that serves a Korean community services center,” she says, “so we know that this product is going to people who know how to work with it and have a real love for the item.”

Seafood is obviously is highly perishable, requiring either canning or refrigerated transportation. SeaShare acts as a connector between fishers, processors, and food banks, ensuring donations move efficiently from source to consumer. In the contiguous U.S., SeaShare operates along established shipping routes, leveraging its partner Feeding America’s network of food banks to find distribution near the site of donation.

Nicole Candon, Director of Brand & Social Impact at Oddisea SuperFrozen, understands that distribution complexity. Oddisea SuperFrozen is a U.S. importer and distributor of seafood and a SeaShare partner. In 2025, they donated approximately 38,000 seafood servings through the partnership. Some of the seafood the company imports, though safe for consumption and high quality, cannot be sold commercially, leaving the organization in need of a responsible distribution channel.

SeaShare identifies appropriate food bank partners for the business and arranges direct pickups from Oddisea’s warehouse. “From there, the product moves through the food bank’s distribution network and is delivered to local communities,” Candon tells Food Tank. “Because seafood is so rare, our product was usually fully distributed within days of pickup.”

In Alaska, one of SeaShare’s key service areas, those distribution logistics become considerably more challenging. At times, SeaShare donates to highly isolated communities accessible only by boat.

“If we have a 30-pound box of salmon heading to an elder feeding program on an island with 65 residents, that donation is moving well outside of normal shipping lanes,” says Lindoff. “We rely on good partners at the Alaska seafood plants and within the air or barge freight companies who take the time to do the right thing and make sure our elders get this fish.”

Lindoff tells Food Tank she has been moved to tears as she speaks with food bank managers who report being “overcome” by the impact of SeaShare’s donations. She says she’s happy to be part of the solution.

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 courtesy of SeaShare

The post SeaShare Is Closing the Protein Gap in America’s Food Banks appeared first on Food Tank.

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

Medically Tailored Groceries Improve Health Outcomes

A new peer-reviewed study published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease looked at patients receiving free, plant-based medically tailored groceries from a food pantry connected to a community health center.

The groceries include fruits and vegetables, beans, whole grains, and foods like nut butter. Researchers found that people who received more of the grocery packages had improvements in diastolic blood pressure, weight, and BMI.

This was an observational study, not a randomized controlled trial, meaning the researchers can’t say the groceries caused those improvements. And they didn’t find significant overall improvements in systolic blood pressure or blood sugar. But the findings are encouraging they’re another reason to keep studying what happens when nutritious food is more accessible.

Food is Medicine isn’t a new idea. Indigenous communities and cultures around the world have understood the connection between food and health for centuries. What’s changing is that the healthcare system is finally beginning to catch up.

Food Scrap Collection Services Grow

The Associated Press reported this week on the growth of small food-scrap collection services across the United States.

In Detroit, the company Scrap Soils collects coffee grounds, eggshells, vegetable scraps, and other food waste from homes and businesses and turns it into compost for farms and gardens. And this isn’t happening only in Detroit. There are now more than 400 food waste collection programs around the country including in Baltimore.

Food waste is often framed as an enormous, almost impossible problem.But solutions don’t always need to be so big. They can be a truck, buckets, a compost pile, and people who understand that what we call waste can actually be a resource.

Companies Fail to Grasp Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Caused by Climate Change

A recent analysis from the Food and Land Use Coalition is warning that many of the world’s biggest food companies still don’t fully understand how vulnerable their supply chains are to climate change.

Companies may model drought or extreme heat, for example, but don’t account for what happens when drought, wildfire, pests, deforestation, and water shortages start interacting with one another. And that’s increasingly the world farmers are operating in.

Climate change doesn’t arrive one problem at a time. That’s why resilience isn‘t just about developing a new technology. The world needs healthier soils, more diverse farms, better water management, better data, and supply chains that aren’t built around the assumption that tomorrow will look like yesterday. And companies need to invest in that resilience alongside farmers, not simply push the risk down the supply chain.

FAO Pushes for Investment in Dryland Forests

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is highlighting the need for more funding to support the world’s dryland forests.

These landscapes support communities, livestock, biodiversity, and food production, but they’re under enormous pressure from climate change, degradation, and unsustainable land use.

This is sometimes forgotten when talking about food systems. Food doesn’t begin and end on a farm. Forests are part of our food and agriculture systems. Water is part of our food system. Biodiversity is part of our food system. Protecting those resources isn’t separate from feeding people. It’s fundamental to it.

African Union Calls for Support for Climate-Resilient Seeds

The African Union is calling for greater investment in affordable, high-quality, climate-resilient seeds as countries across the continent confront drought, floods, rising temperatures, and growing food insecurity.

But there’s an important distinction here. Innovation shouldn’t mean telling farmers that everything they’ve been doing is wrong and handing them a new technology. Farmers already hold extraordinary knowledge about their crops, their soils, and their communities.

The best innovation happens when researchers, policymakers, businesses, and farmers work together—combining that knowledge with new tools and making sure farmers actually have access to them. Because the goal isn’t technology for technology’s sake. It’s helping farmers grow food, earn a living, nourish their communities, and become more resilient in a climate that is changing faster than any of us would like.

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Photo courtesy of Arthur Medeiros, Wikimedia Commons

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It wasn’t that long ago that bison were scarce in South Dakota.

In just six years, that’s changed dramatically. Now, more than 1,100 bison roam the grasslands, already the largest Native-owned bison herd in the world and still growing. The Sicáŋğu Food Sovereignty Initiative is also helping community members learn to grow, produce, harvest, and prepare their own food, while workforce development programs support farmers, ranchers, aspiring entrepreneurs.

The name of the organization speaks for itself: This is not only a success story for one Indigenous group; it’s a success story for efforts everywhere toward food sovereignty.

“When I first started, [people couldn’t] really articulate what food sovereignty was or understand the importance of it. But now, people are seeing the urgency and that importance,” says Matte Wilson, Deputy Director of the Sicáŋğu Community Development Corporation.

The urgency of building food sovereignty in Indigenous communities is stark. Food insecurity levels among Native households in the United States are significantly above the national average. Indigenous people are “up to three times more likely to die from cardiometabolic diseases compared to other groups,” a Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems report notes. And tragically, this is no accident. Over recent centuries, federal policies have restricted traditional food systems, disinvested in reservations, interfered in organizing efforts, and more.

But when Indigenous communities set the terms for their own food and agriculture systems, land management practices, economic structures, cultural expression, and health policy, things change for the better. There’s deep wisdom in these foodways—wisdom that’s lasted thousands of years and can continue to protect and nourish communities to this day.

Michael Kotutwa Johnson’s work at the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Resilience Center, for example works to advance Indigenous resilience research, education, and outreach. And Johnson’s work in particular has focused on bringing back traditional varieties of Hopi crops.

Without biodiversity, “we have no true sustainability,” he says. “[These seeds are] a backbone of our community. They’re the things that survived us, and it’s taken us years and years to cultivate. So to bring them back home, finally, is very important.”

Within Indigenous models of food sovereignty, we also see concepts like Food is Medicine and local foodways as inherent truths. This is why acclaimed Chef Sean Sherman is so frustrated with the U.S. government’s new upside-down-pyramid model of dietary guidelines, he told us at Climate Week NYC a couple weeks ago. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, he created the RING Diet (Regional Indigenous Nutritional Guide).

“We’re all different people and that’s what’s beautiful about this one because it’s regional, so you can make rings everywhere and it can go global quickly,” he said at Climate Week. “The more we eat for health, the better off we’ll be and the more understanding we have.”

Those benefits extend beyond food systems, to all parts of people’s livelihoods. I love seeing how the First Nations Development Institute works to not just invest in Native food and agriculture systems but also to strengthen research and advocacy for Native economic justice, support the stewardship of Native lands, and help protect and amplify Native arts, language, and knowledge systems.

And the organization Native Agriculture Financial Services (NAFS) provides capital to support agriculture production, rural business development, and rural infrastructure for Native American farmers, ranchers, and agricultural communities.

“Health isn’t just about individual choices. It’s about community, environment, and the systems around us,” says A-dae Romero Briones, a Vice President at the First Nations Development Institute.

Across the entire food system, we would all do well to continue elevating Indigenous voices—and, for those of us who come from different backgrounds, deeply listening. How can we learn from these traditions to build stronger local food networks and more resilient land management practices everywhere? How can we advocate for food sovereignty in even more communities? How can we embed this interconnected understanding of food and environment and health into all parts of our political and economic systems?

None of us has all these answers, of course—but there’s no question that, the harder we work toward a food system model rooted in local sovereignty, the better off we’ll all be!

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 courtesy of Anne Preble, Unsplash

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