the GoodEater Collaborative

Author: Joshua Levin (33 Articles)

Joshua Levin is a consultant to non-profits and their corporate partners in sustainable agriculture business development and sustainable food markets. Joshua holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business, where he was a Catherine B. Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, and a BA from Harvard University. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.

Food battles are coming to a head this season.  Last night I attended the panel talk “Can ‘Big Food’ Embrace Sustainable Agriculture”, hosted by the Sustainable Practice Network and located at the Chase Building, featuring senior representation from Monsanto, General Mills, Dean Foods, Deutsche Bank, the Rainforest Alliance, and Slow Food.  This was one of only several great debates held just this week on the food system, including clashes on ethical farms vs. vegetarianism, and on food stamps and the obese poor.

While there was no major confrontation at the “Big Food” talk, there was a clear clash between the majority of the panel (as well as the moderator), who’s every sentence seemed to include the words “technology”, “productivity”, or “investment opportunity”, and Josh Viertel of Slow Food, who was so rude as to ask us to question some of our basic assumptions. . . for example, by reminding us of the fact that we already produce an aggregate of 4,000 calories p/person p/day.  Michael Doane, of Monsanto, responded that in an ideal world, we would all be farmers, and then we’d realize the realities of the trade, better understand and care for our food, and have a lot more consensus on these issues; however, Michael pointed out, this is unfortunately not the reality.  Tensie Whelan, President of the Rainforest Alliance, plowed some middle ground by suggesting that the current problems in food production in the Global South are not only technological, but social, and that we need to develop a suite of solutions.

Simultaneously, further uptown, Frank Bruni (NYTimes restaurant critic, author of Born Round) and Jonathan Safran Foer (author of Eating Animals) were debating “ethical” meat-eating vs. vegetarianism.  Chichi Wang reports on the event on Serious Eats, quoting his own question to Foer:  “Why not fix the system by making the model farm the rule, rather than jettisoning the entire notion of eating animals?”

Lastly, check out the debate the NYTimes is currently hosting on Food Stamps, poverty, and obesity.  This connects directly back to my earlier piece: “Stuffed and Starved in America: Why are Food Waste and Food Stamps Simultaneously Peaking?”.  My favorite quote is from Tom Laskawy of Grist.org, who says:

“Could this controversy result from a belief on the part of pundits and policy makers that being poor in America means acquiescing quietly to a substandard diet? Healthy foods, in this line of reasoning, are a luxury that should be reserved for those who can afford them. As unjust as this sounds when presented so baldly, it is exactly this belief that underlies attempts to deny government the right to make good nutrition a cornerstone of the food stamp program.”