The Future of Sustainability: Q&A With Food Tank’s Danielle Nierenberg
Specialty food companies have a host of opportunities to tackle the challenges surrounding climate change and the human, social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainability, according to Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank.
The leader of the food-and-agriculture research organization will discuss these aspects of sustainability as they relate to the specialty food industry in a panel session with Kim Severson of The New York Times, Paul Willis of Niman Ranch, and Anna Hammond of Matriark Foods at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 23, on the Main Stage at the Show.
Nierenberg spoke with SFA News Daily.
What is Food Tank’s mission?
Food Tank’s mission is to highlight stories of hope and success in food and agriculture systems. We do this with the aim to inspire, motivate, and ultimately activate positive transformation and how we produce and consume food.
We like to bring people together who normally wouldn’t be in the same room or talking to one another—having workers talk to the head of a food corporation or getting farmers in the same room as nutritionists. We would really like to make sure that we create an atmosphere where people are comfortable being uncomfortable, where they can talk about these issues, figure out the nuances in our food and agriculture systems, and understand that everything’s pretty gray. It’s not black and white when we’re coming up with solutions to nourish people while protecting the planet.
We also do a lot of publishing and research. Our website is very robust, with news every day. We’ve published reports and books. We convene some working groups around the intersection of food and technology, academics working in the food and agriculture space, and also companies both small and large that are working in food and agriculture. We do this with the aim of learning from past mistakes so that we can find solutions going forward.
What should we be expecting in the decade ahead?
I think the climate crisis is with us, and that the companies that don’t address this now are not going to be around in 10 or 20 years. We’re seeing some companies make commitments for 2050. The world will be on fire by then, and we need commitments that understand the urgency of the climate crisis and that address things like packaging in our food system, and the toll that the climate crisis is taking on farm workers and restaurant servers. We need a food industry that really is looking at these changes and being proactive about coming up with solutions because I think the companies that ignore climate or put their commitments off aren’t going to be around 10 years from now. You have a generation of folks who are going to have limited spending power, and they’re going to want to spend their few dollars on things that are good for themselves and the planet.
What advice do you have for specialty food companies seeking to operate more sustainably?
How can companies learn from what’s already been going on in this space? I think they need to talk more to one another and maybe stop reinventing the wheel. Build coalitions with one another around some of these issues, whether it’s food loss in a factory or finding new ways of packaging food, whether it’s compostable packaging or making it easier to recycle. I think there are lots of ways that companies can work together in a spirit of co-opetition, where they are competitors, but they could come up with ways to look at sustainability as something that they all work towards together.
What are some of the key takeaways that you hope attendees will get from your presentation?
I hope attendees will come away with both a sense of urgency and a sense of hopefulness and what is possible, and understand that there are change makers, including business leaders, food companies, and folks within the industry, who are working towards making food and agriculture more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. I hope they come away thinking, ‘OK, we can do this, but we need to do it now.’