1:59

It's so good. What do you mean? Rosewater.

2:03

There's a lot of

2:05

singing little ditties. There's

2:08

a lot of quippy fun facts and

2:11

little jokes. This tree is very good. A lot

2:13

of yelling about plants and fungi.

2:16

You say yelling, but actually it's more

2:18

just like hyped up enthusiasm,

2:20

right? Thank you. Those

2:22

are much kinder words. So

2:25

sweet. Happy

2:27

flourishing, don't die.

2:30

So when you forage, Alexis,

2:32

like you walk into your backyard

2:35

or into a forest and

2:37

what do you see that I guess most of us

2:40

don't?

2:41

It's like a supermarket basically for

2:42

you. It's like Disney

2:45

world, but plants and

2:47

full of much cheaper food. You

2:50

walk in and you see this very

2:53

vibrant ecosystem that

2:56

like we are a part of. And

2:59

there's something so fulfilling about

3:01

it, right? You're just like, I pulled this out

3:03

of the ground and now it's sustaining

3:06

me. Yeah. Food

3:09

is a way to connect with other people. Food

3:11

is a way to expose love.

3:14

Food is a way to express creativity.

3:17

I think I look into natural

3:19

spaces and I just see

3:22

wonder. Wonder.

3:24

Food,

3:27

it's a basic need and

3:29

one of life's greatest pleasures. But

3:33

for many, accessing nutritious

3:35

and affordable food

3:36

isn't always easy. We have

3:39

nearly 50 million people that

3:41

are living food insecure, which means

3:43

they never know when or where their next meal is

3:46

coming from. And on top of that, the ways

3:48

we produce and consume food are

3:50

harming the planet. Human population

3:53

has doubled in the last 50 years

3:54

and meat consumption

3:57

has tripled. How can we produce

3:59

enough good?

3:59

food for a growing global

4:02

population. I think that was the best place

4:04

to start was just opening up my eyes

4:06

and starting to see the world around me for what it had

4:08

to offer. We need solutions to secure

4:11

our food for the future and reconnect

4:13

with the land that feeds us. So

4:16

today on the show, the food

4:18

connection.

4:19

Ideas from people who are taking lessons

4:22

from the past and others who are

4:24

experimenting with

4:25

new technologies to change

4:27

the way we eat. For

4:30

Alexis Nicole Nelson, collecting

4:33

ingredients out in nature has helped

4:35

her reconnect to her food. She

4:38

first discovered foraging when she was

4:40

just five years old. I

4:42

remember gardening

4:43

with my mother at the house

4:45

I grew up in and this

4:48

one day stands out in my mind

4:51

with me probably not helping at all

4:54

and her pointing out some grass

4:56

in our yard that looked different than

4:58

all of the other grass, which until she pointed

5:00

it out to me, I had never noticed.

5:03

So my mom tells me to go and break some for

5:06

her. I break it and

5:08

suddenly it's the air is just like perfumed

5:11

with garlic. And

5:14

she's like, that is onion

5:16

grass. You know

5:18

how we sometimes cook with like green

5:20

onions. You can cook with that too. And

5:24

warning, if you tell a five year old that they will

5:26

just start breaking plants in your yard

5:29

and seeing if magical smells emanate

5:31

from them. And

5:32

eating them. Yes. Okay. So

5:35

your mom was very into plants clearly. Did you get your

5:37

love of food and gardening and the

5:40

outdoors from your parents? Do you think?

5:41

Oh, absolutely. On

5:44

my dad's side of the family, his mom

5:47

is also of indigenous ancestry, Iroquois

5:49

ancestry. So he was just being exposed

5:52

to foodways that some

5:54

of his peers weren't necessarily

5:56

while he was a kid, while

5:58

he was a teenager.

5:59

And my dad's

6:01

excellent in the kitchen. And it was

6:03

really this kind of coming together of

6:06

the two things that I enjoyed doing with

6:08

my parents the most as a

6:10

kid. And I'm very lucky

6:13

to be a black kid who

6:15

grew up with two black parents who

6:17

were also very outdoorsy, because

6:21

not all of us get it. There

6:24

really is kind of like a, there's been this cultural

6:26

separation between a lot of

6:28

black folks and the outdoors. But

6:31

historically, there was no separation,

6:33

right? And you have been studying just

6:36

what happened. Can you explain? Yeah,

6:38

absolutely, 100%. So

6:42

back, especially in the South,

6:45

while a lot of black folks were still

6:47

enslaved, there was a

6:49

whole lot of kind of knowledge

6:52

trading between black folks and indigenous folks

6:55

in a lot of the Southern states and

6:57

a lot of like the Midwestern and Northern states

6:59

too. And for

7:01

a lot of people who were enslaved, the

7:04

way that you beefed

7:06

up like the meager meals or the scraps

7:09

that you were given was often by

7:11

supplementing with foraging, with

7:14

trapping, with fishing. So

7:17

that was knowledge that was a

7:20

huge part of

7:22

like early black culture here

7:25

in the Americas. After

7:27

they were emancipated, suddenly

7:29

laws were getting put in place very rapidly

7:32

about only being able to kind

7:34

of reap the benefits of land that

7:37

you owned. And if you are newly

7:39

freed, odds are

7:41

you do not own land. No. So

7:44

if you can't hunt and forage

7:46

on public property and you don't

7:49

yet have private property to your

7:51

name, boom, that is

7:53

a part of your life that you are not partaking

7:56

in anymore. And it doesn't take a whole lot of generations

7:58

passing. for that knowledge

8:01

to just kind of fall away

8:03

completely.

8:06

And is this true then that like when there

8:08

was an opportunity to go foraging it was kind of like

8:11

well I don't have the handed down knowledge

8:13

and anyway only poor people would do that?

8:15

Yeah, I then you yeah you have

8:17

this really weird thing happen in the 20th

8:19

century where everyone is like

8:21

wanting to show off wealth

8:24

so then foraging kind of became

8:27

taboo even if you did have the knowledge

8:29

and that was regardless of race. Foraging

8:32

very much got looked down upon because why would you

8:34

be you know heading down to the creek to gather

8:36

pawpaws when you can go to the grocery store

8:39

and get a banana? And in the 1950s and

8:41

1960s being a Black person out in nature, out

8:48

in the woods, out in predominantly white

8:50

spaces was like a very scary thing

8:52

to do. Um

8:54

for the sake of your safety that

8:56

like that's not a space that you would want

8:59

to necessarily be in

9:01

and it was kind of like a three

9:04

combo punch to us

9:06

culturally moving away

9:10

from getting to know our natural spaces

9:13

and I am one of a

9:16

myriad of people who is actively trying

9:18

to combat that.

9:20

And do you feel like it's working? Like what kind of

9:22

feedback do you get from your followers?

9:24

Yeah,

9:25

I

9:26

one of the best days I think I've ever

9:28

had in my life I was

9:31

out foraging

9:32

and a girl

9:35

who also happens to be Black,

9:37

um probably a teenager, she runs

9:40

up to me and she's like you are that girl from

9:42

TikTok. I was

9:44

like oh my god uh

9:46

yes and she was so

9:49

excited and so I got to like take her

9:51

and show her what I was there

9:54

harvesting. I got to like give her

9:56

and her mom like a cut leaf to for

9:58

leaves so they could taste like the spicy

10:01

brassica-y-ness from

10:04

it. And the way that

10:06

her and her friends and

10:09

her mom's face lit up, I

10:12

went home and I cried. I cried for a solid 20

10:14

minutes because that's... Oh

10:18

my gosh, it's almost overwhelming. And

10:22

the thing that stuck with me was she was just like, you're

10:25

doing this for the culture.

10:29

Man, I'm starting to tear up just thinking about it now.

10:36

In some ways through

10:38

foraging, you are helping people reconnect

10:41

with their own history and the ways

10:44

that people used to eat off the land, like

10:46

in a seasonal, sustainable

10:49

way.

10:49

Yeah.

10:51

So many of us have such a fraught

10:53

relationship

10:55

with food.

10:58

And a lot of that is due

11:01

in part to societal pressures. A

11:03

lot of that is due to

11:06

how processed food is. And

11:09

I personally,

11:11

I have had a historically very fraught

11:13

relationship with food. I

11:16

grew up very overweight. And

11:18

so I was always being pressured to

11:21

eat less, cook less. I,

11:24

full disclosure, like

11:26

dealt with an eating disorder in my early

11:28

and my mid twenties, in which food

11:31

was like very much the enemy

11:33

in which I had to like train myself to stop

11:35

thinking about this subject that

11:37

I had loved thinking about and dreaming

11:40

about my entire

11:42

childhood. And in a way, diving

11:45

back into foraging was

11:48

the way that I fell back in love with food.

11:50

Meet the service berry, also known as the June

11:52

Berry. It was not on purpose.

11:55

I was super poor after college.

11:59

I'm in a house with five of

12:02

my friends and wanting

12:04

to eat things other than

12:06

ramen and

12:08

canned vegetables. And

12:12

so I was like, oh, well, you know, let me turn to

12:14

some of that, like, weird knowledge

12:17

that I had just been amassing

12:19

for no reason as a kid. And

12:21

it just brought me this joy and this connection

12:24

to police.

12:32

But I didn't have at that point in time,

12:34

so much so

12:36

that I went out

12:39

and I sought out more information. And I

12:41

got more bold with my cooking

12:43

and, you know, started being willing

12:46

to put like flour and bread into

12:48

my food again and, you know, was

12:50

willing to make sweet things

12:52

again. I just,

12:54

there's

12:56

something soul nourishing about

12:58

caring about what you're nourishing your body with.

13:02

That's forager Alexis Nicole

13:05

Nelson. You can find her on

13:07

TikTok at Alexis Nicole

13:10

and on Instagram and Twitter at

13:12

Black Forager.

13:14

On the show today, The Food

13:16

Connection. I'm Anoush Zamorodi

13:18

and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from

13:21

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It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.

17:48

there

18:00

are more native restaurants out there. And

18:03

it does start with history. I mean, it's just the relations

18:05

of indigenous peoples and primarily

18:07

the United States government. You know, it's going to be important

18:10

overall to know these pieces in history that

18:12

have happened to us and have really

18:14

kept us down for a long time.

18:17

Here's more from Sean Sherman on the Ted

18:19

stage.

18:21

I think what's most damaging for us and why

18:23

we don't have a lot of indigenous restaurants

18:25

out there was the loss of our education. Because

18:28

this whole generation, like my great grandfather's

18:30

generation and my grandfather's generation, they

18:32

should have been learning everything their ancestors intended

18:35

them to learn. You know, how to fish, how

18:37

to hunt, how to gather, how to identify plants,

18:39

how to live sustainably utilizing plants and

18:41

animals around us. But instead

18:43

we went through a really intense assimilation

18:46

period. The boarding school systems

18:48

stripped this whole generation of all that

18:50

knowledge and education. And we're still

18:52

reeling from that in our communities today because

18:55

of this direct link to the trauma that happened

18:57

there. Being indigenous

18:59

in the 1900s was much better. My grandparents

19:01

were born before they were even citizens, which doesn't

19:04

happen until 1924. We couldn't

19:06

vote until 1965. We

19:08

couldn't celebrate religions until 78. So

19:12

what does it look like for me growing up in this? Like I was

19:14

born in the mid 70s and growing

19:16

up in post-colonial America. Like what kind

19:18

of foods was I eating? People in the media are always

19:20

like, you're native, like what kind of foods you grew up with?

19:22

Because they want to hear a cool story. Like, oh, I'd get up in the morning,

19:25

take down an elk with a slingshot I made, I have

19:27

a big family feast, you know? But

19:29

that wasn't the reality, you know? Because like I

19:31

grew up with the commodity food program because we were

19:33

poor like a lot of people on the reservation and

19:36

it's just the way it was. And we didn't even have the pretty cans when

19:38

I was growing up. We just had these like black

19:40

and white cans with beef and juices and

19:42

that's dinner, you know, and that sucks. We

19:45

could do better than this. There's so much more to learn and more

19:47

to offer with indigenous foods.

19:50

Sean, I just want to emphasize this

19:52

point that as you

19:54

say, indigenous foods, like the

19:56

ones you are serving today in

19:58

your restaurant,

19:59

weren't really around when

20:02

you were growing up on the Pine Ridge reservation.

20:04

Yep, we did harvest things like this wild

20:07

prairie turnip that we called Timsola

20:09

and choke cherries and there were

20:12

some elders that have held on to some recipes

20:14

but a lot of it was colonized. I remember my mom

20:16

giving me a cookbook she's like oh we already have

20:18

a cookbook featuring all the Lakota foods

20:21

and it just kind of read like a Lutheran cookbook

20:23

so it's just like no mom I'm looking for recipes

20:25

without cream of mushroom soup you know. So

20:28

I wanted to know like what kind of wild

20:30

foods were we utilizing so it just was a long

20:33

path of self-study to try and figure

20:34

it out because there you know was no

20:37

joy of Native American cooking out there for me. No,

20:39

so where did you turn to your sources

20:41

for information

20:42

about this? Was it people? Was it

20:44

I don't know archives?

20:46

Yeah a little bit of everything you know because I would

20:48

just talk to people some of their memories trying

20:51

to filter what might have been indigenous

20:53

and what was obviously brought on later. Spent

20:56

a lot of time outdoors and really just trying to understand

20:58

what are the purpose of all these plants that my ancestors

21:01

would have known you know the food is it medicine

21:03

can you craft with it or can you do all three? And

21:06

I think that was the best place to start was just opening

21:08

up my eyes and starting to see the world around me for

21:11

what it had to offer.

21:12

So you run the restaurant but you also

21:14

founded something called the Indigenous

21:17

Food Lab where your

21:19

goal is to teach people the fundamentals

21:22

of indigenous food education.

21:25

What are those fundamentals?

21:26

So I think the first thing that you do

21:28

is just identify what does the term indigenous

21:30

education mean. So to break down

21:32

that first off indigenous education

21:35

was thousands of generations of knowledge

21:37

being handed down family member after

21:39

family member community after community giving

21:41

people the basically the blueprint

21:43

to live sustainably utilizing plants and animals

21:46

of your region and all the tradition that goes along

21:48

with it and understanding the immense amount

21:50

of diversity out there because indigenous peoples obviously

21:53

isn't one group you know there's still 576 tribes

21:56

federally recognized in the US 622 in Canada 20% Mexico

22:00

identifying as indigenous. So

22:03

when we're breaking down indigenous knowledge, we're looking

22:05

at the wild foods, permaculture, agriculture,

22:07

seed saving, regional histories,

22:10

medicines, food preservation, fermentation,

22:12

nutrition, health, spirituality, sustainability,

22:14

cooking techniques. Like it just goes on and

22:16

on. Like it's a whole education because that's what all

22:19

of our educations were. You know, we have

22:21

a community garden that we do ourselves and

22:23

we're growing a lot of heirloom seed varietals, whether

22:25

they're corns, beans, squash, amaranth,

22:27

tobacco, chilies, and our

22:30

goal is really utilizing our food lab as a place

22:32

where tribal communities, especially

22:34

around us, can work with us so we can help them

22:37

develop healthy indigenous culinary

22:39

projects for their community and share

22:41

a lot of this knowledge base and education with their

22:43

own community too and just help grow

22:45

it.

22:46

And that's why we should have Native American food restaurants

22:49

all over the nation and run by indigenous

22:51

peoples, right? And for us, we just want to

22:53

get this food back into tribal communities, especially

22:55

and make people healthy and happy

22:58

and break a lot of the cycle of

23:00

government reliance on food and huge

23:02

rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity and heart

23:05

disease because of this low nutritional

23:07

food base that the government's been feeding us for too

23:09

long. Indigenous diet is really kind

23:11

of the most ideal diet. It's healthy fats, it's

23:14

diverse proteins, it's low carbs, it's low

23:16

salt, it's a ton of plant diversity

23:19

and it's seasonal, you know? It's just really good.

23:21

It's like what the paleo diet wishes it was really

23:23

when it comes down to it. Because

23:25

that just makes sense, you know? If we can

23:27

control our food, we can control

23:30

our future. And for us, it's an

23:32

exciting time to be indigenous because we

23:34

are taking all of these lessons from our ancestors

23:37

that should have been passed down to us, relearning

23:39

them and utilizing the world today with

23:41

everything it has to offer and becoming something different.

23:44

You know, this is an indigenous evolution and

23:47

revolution at the same time.

23:51

You have said, Sean, in the past that

23:54

sharing culture through food

23:56

is healing.

23:58

What do you mean by that?

23:59

I think that, you know, again, like it just

24:02

opens up people. So if you think of the first

24:04

time you maybe have experienced

24:06

sushi or Ethiopian food or something

24:09

like that and how that affected you,

24:11

the flavors and, you know, the thoughts and how

24:14

it changed your perception of that country

24:16

or that culture or whatever it might be. And

24:18

it creates curiosity and you want to know more

24:20

and you want to learn more. And I think that

24:23

for Indigenous peoples who have had such a rough time,

24:25

especially with the U.S. government, and

24:27

we've had so much stripped away from us,

24:29

that

24:29

it's really important to experience some of these flavors

24:32

that are a true representation of where

24:34

we are.

24:35

If you can taste these foods and have places to

24:37

taste them and understand, it's going to open up a

24:39

lot more people for compassion and understanding.

24:41

And you know, we

24:43

can live in a better world.

24:45

That's Sean Sherman, co-owner

24:48

of Awamni in Minneapolis

24:51

and founder of The Sioux Chef. You

24:53

can see his full talk at TED.com.

24:57

On the show today,

24:58

ideas on reconnecting

25:00

to what we eat and solutions

25:03

for some of our biggest food problems,

25:06

which includes

25:07

hunger.

25:08

There's a lot that has to do with just

25:11

access,

25:12

which is why I have always said that hunger is

25:14

not an issue of scarcity. There's more

25:16

than enough food. This is social

25:19

entrepreneur Jasmine

25:20

Crow.

25:21

For the last four years, she's been trying to

25:23

figure out how to redirect healthy

25:26

food that might be wasted to the

25:28

people

25:29

who need it.

25:30

Ever since she visited a food bank in 2017 and

25:32

saw what was on offer. I

25:36

always remember the biggest thing

25:38

is they were giving away a gallon

25:40

of barbecue sauce. So

25:42

just think like a whole gallon of milk, but it's filled

25:44

with barbecue sauce and then

25:46

no meat. They had Weight

25:49

Watchers, some Bell Vita breakfast

25:51

biscuits. There were these superhero shaped

25:54

macaroni noodles, a

25:56

couple of canned goods, like a very small

25:58

can of corn, a can of peas. a

26:00

can of refried beans, a kettle potato

26:02

chip, french fried green onions. And

26:05

that's what they were giving people, that was it.

26:07

Nothing was fresh, nothing made sense.

26:10

I couldn't think that someone would be able

26:12

to take those items home and

26:14

actually make a meal of them.

26:16

I learned that it was ultimately the case for a lot

26:18

of food banks and a lot of food pantries.

26:21

They would receive donations

26:23

of whatever it was gonna be that week

26:26

and that's what it was. And what I saw that

26:28

that was doing is

26:30

it made people have to go to a lot of different food

26:33

banks because they never knew what they were gonna

26:35

get.

26:36

It to me was a real

26:38

eye opening experience of there

26:40

being a huge difference in this country between

26:43

access to food and access

26:45

to meals. So Jasmine

26:48

started to investigate why food banks

26:50

weren't solving the US's hunger

26:52

problem. She continues from

26:54

the Ted stage.

26:57

In almost every major US city,

26:59

the food bank is viewed as a beloved community

27:02

institution.

27:03

Corporations send volunteers down

27:05

on a weekly basis to sort

27:07

through food items and make boxes of food

27:09

for the needy.

27:10

In Kansas, they warm the hearts

27:13

of schools and office buildings that participate

27:16

and fill the shelves of food banks and food pantries

27:18

across the nation.

27:19

This is how we work to end hunger.

27:21

And what I've come to realize is that we are doing

27:23

hunger wrong.

27:24

We've created a cycle that keeps people

27:27

dependent on food banks and pantries on a

27:29

monthly basis for food that is often

27:31

not well balanced and certainly doesn't

27:33

provide them with a healthy meal. Yet

27:35

we're wasting more food than ever before.

27:37

More than 80 billion

27:38

pounds a year to be exact.

27:41

And as this food sits, it gradually rocks

27:43

and produces harmful methane gas,

27:45

a leading contributor to global climate change.

27:48

You have the waste of the food itself, the

27:50

waste of all the money associated with producing

27:52

this now wasted food, and the waste

27:55

of labor with all of the above.

27:57

All of this made me realize that hunger

27:59

was not in.

27:59

a scarcity but rather

28:02

a matter of logistics. I

28:05

mean Jasmine that is

28:06

staggering. I cannot even picture

28:08

how much 80 billion pounds of

28:11

food like what does that even look like?

28:13

We are wasting so much every

28:15

year and I want to stress that

28:17

this is not food that's also coming from

28:20

our households because if you factor that number

28:22

in it's even greater. But for consumer

28:25

facing businesses every

28:27

year 80 billion pounds of perfectly

28:29

good food goes to waste. So

28:31

these are the restaurants, these are the grocery stores

28:34

you go to, the hotels, all

28:36

that food gets thrown away. While at the same

28:38

time we have nearly 50 million

28:41

people that are living food insecure

28:43

which means they never know when or where their next

28:45

meal is coming from. I just couldn't

28:48

believe that we were living in a

28:50

society that was allowing that to happen.

28:52

All of those things combined ultimately

28:55

led me to start this company

28:58

Goodr. So in 2017

28:59

I created an app that would inventory

29:03

everything it is that a business sells and

29:05

make it super easy for them to donate this excess

29:07

food that would typically go to waste at the end of the night.

29:10

All the user has to do now is click on an item,

29:13

tell us how many they have to donate and our

29:15

platform calculates the weight and the tax value

29:17

of those items at time of donation. We

29:19

then connect with local drivers in the shared economy

29:22

to get this food picked up and delivered directly

29:24

to the door as a nonprofit organizations and

29:26

people in need.

29:27

I provided the data and the analytics

29:30

to help businesses reduce food waste at the source

29:32

and they even saved millions of dollars.

29:34

Our mission was simple,

29:36

feed more, waste waste. And

29:38

by 2018 our clients included

29:40

the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsville

29:43

Jackson,

29:43

Corn Mel, Chick-fil-A and Papa John's.

29:46

We've worked with over 200 businesses to divert

29:49

more than 2 million pounds of edible food

29:51

from landfills into the hands of people

29:53

that needed it most.

29:55

So you create this company,

29:58

you build an app and you do well.

29:59

for a few years but

30:02

as we've seen the pandemic up

30:04

and in all kinds of supply

30:06

chains and particularly

30:08

magnified the vulnerabilities

30:10

in our food systems

30:13

did you need to change how you run your business

30:15

as a result so the

30:17

app still exists but what

30:20

we did and twenty twenty as we made a pivot

30:22

a lot of the businesses that we were serving

30:25

have close their doors airports

30:27

convention center stadiums and arenas

30:29

colleges and universities so what

30:31

i started thinking is how can we be

30:33

the helpers our first good customer

30:36

was assay one the public school districts

30:38

in atlanta where there were

30:40

somewhere near fifty thousand students

30:43

that world the bus to school everyday

30:45

again logistics and at school

30:48

they receive breakfast someone so that's

30:50

where they were eating and now when

30:52

schools are closing how are these kids gonna

30:54

get access to their food and so a

30:56

good or came in and did is we started delivering

30:58

food directly to the students' homes

31:01

we the into that same com sat and

31:04

we started working directly with food

31:06

distributors and main factors purchasing

31:09

foods at costs and in delivering

31:11

it in bulk two singers across

31:14

the city

31:15

so rather than take

31:17

access food or wasted food

31:19

and

31:19

make sure it gets to people who need it you

31:21

are actually buying the

31:24

food that people need

31:26

in one segment of our business yes but

31:28

we are also buying food from

31:31

distributors in a voucher is that

31:33

would otherwise go to waste or that they

31:35

can no longer sell will really

31:37

helping to make sure that food doesn't vote

31:39

away sit the manufacturer and distributors

31:42

sides roscoe still helping businesses

31:44

address to the waist and athena days

31:46

we're making sure that people have access to

31:49

food at no cost to them

31:52

in two thousand and sixteen france became

31:54

the first country to ban supermarkets

31:57

from throwing away i

31:58

used instead they must

32:00

donate it and they're fine if they don't.

32:03

Denmark now has a mandated food waste

32:05

grocery store. It's named We

32:07

Food. They recover excess food from

32:09

local grocery stores and sell it at up

32:11

to a 50% off discount. They

32:13

then use all the proceeds and donate it to

32:16

emergency aid programs and social

32:18

need issues for the people in need. And

32:21

last year, the world got its first

32:23

pay what you can grocery store. When feed

32:25

it forward, open in Toronto. And

32:27

their shelf remains stocked by recovering

32:29

excess food from major supermarkets

32:32

and allowing families to simply pay what they can

32:34

at the grocery store. This

32:36

innovation, we need more of.

32:41

Hearing you give examples from

32:43

other countries makes me wonder

32:46

where the US government is in all

32:48

of this. Like, why isn't this a systemic

32:51

solution? Are city officials

32:53

reaching out to you and saying, Jasmine,

32:55

how can we put you out of business? I

32:58

mean, why do you have to start a company

33:01

to solve what it

33:02

sounds like we need laws for?

33:05

I agree with you. I think 100% it

33:08

should be a systemic solution.

33:10

And I think last year should

33:12

have lifted the veil off of everybody's eyes

33:15

of the plight of hunger in this country and

33:17

just how close to being hungry

33:19

a lot of people are. When you asked

33:22

me how many people in policy

33:24

decision makers have reached out to me and asked

33:26

how can they help? The reality

33:28

is none. I've been waiting for

33:31

one city to say, let's make sure

33:33

that we have food hubs that exist

33:35

where families know they can go

33:38

and get meals for their family

33:40

if they're missing a little bit of

33:42

money. We need less food deserts. We

33:44

need more affordable grocery stores.

33:47

We need more people to have access to

33:49

SNAP. We have to understand inflation

33:51

is happening, right? And until

33:54

we get cities and more governments

33:56

involved in actually trying to solve these problems,

33:59

we're going to continue. need to have a hunger problem. That's

34:04

social entrepreneur Jasmine Crow.

34:06

She's the founder and CEO of Goodr,

34:09

and you can see her full talk at

34:11

ted.com. On the show

34:13

today, The Food Connection. I'm

34:16

Manoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the

34:18

TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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This message comes from NPR's

36:01

Spencer Noom. Eating is an emotional

36:03

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36:05

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36:08

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36:27

It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm

36:29

Manushe Zamorodi.

36:31

On the show today, The Food Connection.

36:35

We've heard about a TikTok influencer

36:37

making a personal change to her

36:39

diet, an indigenous chef

36:42

bringing the old ways of eating back

36:44

to the dinner table, and an entrepreneur

36:46

who wants to make sure good food isn't wasted.

36:50

But with so many people and a planet

36:53

that's so maxed out, how

36:55

will we be able to produce enough food

36:58

in decades to come on a global

37:00

scale? What is the future

37:03

of our food?

37:04

We have a growing global

37:06

population. We have growing demand

37:09

for meat. We also have

37:11

decreasing

37:12

arable land. We have increasingly

37:15

brittle and antiquated food supply chains.

37:17

And all of this is combined with these

37:20

increasing climate pressures. And

37:22

there has to be a new approach. This

37:25

is journalist Amanda Little.

37:27

And like a lot of us, she's trying

37:29

to make ethical food choices for herself.

37:32

I live in Nashville, Tennessee,

37:35

land of barbecues. I am a shark

37:37

in chummed waters, and it has been very

37:39

hard for me to remove

37:41

meat from my diet. And that's just one reason

37:44

why Amanda wrote a book called The

37:46

Fate of Food. It's an investigation

37:49

into what needs to happen to prevent

37:51

future food emergencies. The

37:54

International Panel on Climate Change has said

37:56

that by mid-century, the world

37:58

may reach a threat. threshold of global warming

38:01

beyond which current agricultural practices

38:04

will no longer support large human

38:06

civilizations." And I've committed

38:09

that to memory, it's an actual quote from

38:11

a 2014 IPCC

38:13

report, because it's just such a staggering

38:16

statement.

38:19

When you put it like this, Amanda, like part of me

38:21

is like, oh my gosh, it's enough to want

38:23

to turn off the radio and

38:25

cry. I

38:28

don't want people to do that because you've

38:31

spent all these years traveling and talking to people

38:33

who are trying to fix it. Yeah, this

38:36

is a deeply troubling story. How

38:39

do you feed the world? This is a question

38:41

that has propelled and troubled

38:44

civilization for the better

38:46

part of 13,000 years, right?

38:49

And you have one side saying,

38:51

let's go back to the way things were. Industrial

38:54

farming screwed everything up. We

38:58

need to de-incent our food supply

39:00

and go back to pre-industrial

39:04

agriculture. Those are folks who are

39:06

composting and going back

39:08

to the land and no pesticides,

39:11

those sorts of things? Yes. So

39:13

they want a return to this pre-Green

39:15

Revolution organic, biodynamic

39:18

regenerative farming

39:19

practices. And

39:21

then you have on the other side,

39:23

the techno-optimists who are

39:25

saying food is ripe for reinvention,

39:28

right? Let's throw technology

39:30

at this problem. And then you have this other

39:32

side that's saying, oh no, no, no, I'd like my

39:35

food de-invented.

39:35

Thank you very much.

39:36

We've seen how technology has

39:39

caused this problem. Why would we bring more

39:41

technology to bear? So you've got the

39:43

techno-optimists on one side

39:45

and then opposing them is a kind

39:48

of back to the land camp. Yes.

39:51

And I, as a sort of detached

39:54

observer of all this and not someone who

39:57

had a dog in either fight, was

39:59

really perplexed.

39:59

Like, why is it one or the other? The

40:02

rift between the reinvention camp and the de-invention

40:05

camp has existed for decades. But

40:07

now it's a raging battle.

40:10

Amanda Little continues in her TED

40:12

Talk.

40:13

One side covets the past, the other side

40:15

covets the future. And as someone observing

40:17

this from the outside, I began to wonder,

40:20

why must it be so binary? Can't

40:22

there be a synthesis of the two approaches?

40:25

Our challenge is to borrow

40:27

from the wisdom of the ages and

40:30

from our most advanced science to

40:33

forge this third way, one

40:35

that allows us to improve and scale

40:37

our harvests while restoring rather

40:39

than degrading the underlying web

40:42

of life.

40:43

I belong to neither camp.

40:46

I'm a failed vegan and a lapsed vegetarian

40:48

and a terrible backyard farmer. If

40:51

I'm honest, I will keep trying at this,

40:53

but I may fail. But

40:55

I'm hell-bunt on hope. And if my travels

40:58

have taught me anything, it's that there's good

41:00

reason for hope. Farmers

41:02

and entrepreneurs and academics are radically

41:05

rethinking national and global food

41:06

systems.

41:08

They're marrying principles of old-world

41:10

agroecology and state-of-the-art technologies

41:13

to create what I call a third way

41:15

to our food future.

41:18

So what is this sort

41:19

of third way, this middle

41:22

ground?

41:22

The middle ground is to

41:24

find a synthesis of

41:27

the traditional and the radically new. The

41:29

answer to food security is

41:32

not technology alone. And it's

41:34

not traditionalism alone, but

41:37

it's technology combined with the

41:39

wisdom of a community, right? It's technology

41:42

in cooperation, not competition

41:45

with the natural world. And

41:47

as kind of theoretical as that sounds, there

41:49

were so many examples of

41:52

innovators who were really bearing

41:54

this out.

41:56

One of those innovators is a

41:58

farmer named Pris.

41:59

Newman. When we called Chris, he

42:02

just corralled some of his runaway

42:04

cows. When

42:05

it rains, crazy things happen

42:07

on ranches, especially when it hasn't rained in a while.

42:09

So they wind up in the highway and nice to

42:11

get them out of the road before the sheriff finds out.

42:13

So Chris and his partner

42:16

Annie Newman are two farmers

42:18

in the northern neck of Virginia.

42:20

We farmed

42:22

the land at Stratford Hall, which I

42:24

guess it's claimed to fame as being the

42:27

first place Robert E. Lee, which is an odd place for

42:29

a Black farmer to be farming. But we

42:31

have an opportunity to be on this landscape and to

42:34

pursue Black and Indigenous-led

42:36

food sovereignty from here.

42:38

I first encountered Chris through

42:41

his writing. He's been chronicling

42:43

his own adventures as

42:46

a new entrepreneurial farmer

42:49

who has come up against a lot

42:51

of the profound hypocrisies in

42:54

sustainable food production. And

42:57

he wrote this manifesto, Clean

42:59

Food. If you want to save the world, get

43:01

over yourself.

43:03

By get over yourself, Chris means

43:05

that organic farmers need to be less

43:07

precious about their methods. They

43:10

need to embrace new ways of growing

43:12

healthy food that

43:13

everyone can afford. I grew

43:15

up around poverty

43:17

and grew up around people who were food insecure

43:19

and who were financially insecure. And this

43:21

movement is never going to gain traction or

43:23

take off or become a mass movement if

43:26

we're not appealing beyond

43:28

people who are in the luxury sector. To make

43:30

his food more affordable, Chris

43:32

uses old and new tools

43:35

to farm. His farm is

43:37

a really fascinating blend

43:40

of traditional approaches to farming

43:43

and technology. And

43:45

the more time I spent with Chris

43:48

and Annie, the more I began to see

43:50

what they describe as this kind

43:52

of personal Wakanda,

43:54

this

43:55

food-rich forest ecosystem

43:58

that he imagines

43:59

will be

43:59

managed and tended by intelligent

44:02

machines, by robotic harvesters,

44:05

a place where

44:07

technology exists to

44:10

serve and elevate nature. He

44:12

has, you know, drones and

44:15

electrical fences for managed

44:18

grazing and cameras and

44:20

software, but what he really envisions

44:22

is weaving together these

44:25

old forms of ecology

44:28

of food forests,

44:29

of crop production, of livestock production,

44:32

in harmony with the natural world,

44:34

in harmony with ecosystems, alongside

44:37

technology that can help him scale

44:39

his enterprise and make it possible

44:42

for him to produce his food for

44:45

more people more affordably.

44:47

Amanda

44:48

traveled the country and the world,

44:51

meeting dozens of pioneers working

44:53

toward this third-way approach. In

44:55

Arkansas, she witnessed the maiden

44:57

voyage of an army of weed-destroying

45:00

robots. I had

45:02

the sense that this robot

45:05

was going to look like C-3PO,

45:07

like some glittering gold

45:10

battalion of C-3POs

45:13

who would see marching out into the fields and

45:16

have little pincers and be

45:18

plucking weeds from the ground, but

45:20

in fact it was this

45:21

big sort of hoop skirt

45:23

on the back of a tractor

45:26

under which there was a bank

45:29

of 24 cameras using computer

45:31

vision and the computers

45:34

could distinguish between the crops

45:37

and the weeds and in

45:40

a fraction of the time it takes you to blink, these

45:43

computers deploy with a tiny

45:45

little jet, a squirt

45:48

of concentrated fertilizer that's too

45:50

strong for a baby weed to tolerate

45:52

but spare the

45:53

plant itself. And so this

45:56

intelligent weeder has the potential

45:58

to cut the use of agricultural

46:00

chemicals by up to 90% or more.

46:05

Amanda, you mentioned in your book that in 2017

46:07

the guy who developed these robots, Jorge

46:10

Harrod, that he sold his company

46:12

to the tractor company

46:13

John Deere. Did

46:15

that deal raise some eyebrows?

46:17

Yeah, my question to him was,

46:20

you're, you know, a paradigm shifter,

46:22

you're a disruptor, why are you selling out to the old

46:24

guys? And he said, because

46:26

we need to scale, because we need

46:28

to get these things out into the field, because

46:30

they're great at building really good machines

46:34

and we have no time to waste.

46:36

Harrod is the embodiment of third-way

46:38

thinking, right? Robots,

46:40

he told me,

46:42

don't have to remove us from nature. They can

46:44

bring us closer to it. They can restore it.

46:47

Increasing crop diversity will be crucial

46:50

to

46:50

building resilient food systems.

46:52

And so will decentralizing agriculture

46:55

so that when farmers in one region are disrupted,

46:58

the others around you can keep growing.

47:00

Here again, we see innovators

47:02

borrowing from, and perhaps even

47:04

elevating, the wisdom of

47:06

natural ecosystems. Development

47:09

in plant-based and alternative

47:11

meats are also profoundly hopeful.

47:13

Uma Valetti fed me my

47:15

first plate of lab-grown duck breast

47:18

harvested fresh from a bioreactor.

47:21

It had been grown from a small sampling

47:23

of cells taken from muscle tissue

47:25

and fat and connective tissues,

47:28

which is exactly what we eat when we eat meat. This

47:31

lab-grown or cell-based duck meat

47:33

has very little threat of bacterial contamination.

47:37

It's about 85% lower CO2 emissions

47:39

associated with it. Eventually, it can

47:41

be grown in decentralized

47:43

facilities that aren't vulnerable to supply

47:46

chain disruptions.

47:47

Valetti started out as a cardiologist

47:50

who understood that doctors have been

47:52

developing human and animal tissues

47:54

in laboratories for decades. He

47:57

was inspired as much by that as he was

47:59

by an animal.

47:59

1931 quote from Winston

48:02

Churchill that says, we shall escape

48:04

the absurdity of growing the whole chicken in

48:06

order to eat the breast or the wing by

48:09

rowing them separately in suitable

48:12

mediums. Like Thoreau,

48:14

Valetti is a quintessential third way thinker.

48:17

He's reimagined an old idea using

48:19

new technology to usher in

48:21

a solution whose time has

48:24

come.

48:25

This is some futuristic meat, Amanda.

48:27

Okay, just to be clear though, they take

48:30

cells from animals, they culture

48:32

them,

48:33

and then grow these cells in a

48:35

lab into meat

48:37

that you got to taste. I did,

48:39

I tasted duck breast, which

48:43

had just been produced in

48:45

a bioreactor. And a bioreactor is

48:48

like a giant sophisticated crock

48:50

pot. It basically creates a sort of warm

48:53

environment in which these growing cells

48:55

can replicate. And

48:58

they pulled it out and their

49:00

company chef put a little salt and pepper

49:03

and a little oil in a pan and

49:05

mashed the thing into a little

49:08

meatball and sizzled it

49:10

in the frying pan and it smelled like

49:12

meat. And I'm

49:15

going, oh my gosh, what have I got

49:17

myself into? In part because I had just signed

49:20

a document that said, this is an

49:22

experimental product that has not been approved

49:26

by the FDA and- About

49:29

what you're appetite? Yeah, but

49:31

what was so moving was that,

49:34

Valetti said to me as I was sort of digging

49:37

into this bioreactor meatball, he

49:39

said, you are participating

49:41

in history. We

49:43

are working on this to change

49:45

the lives

49:46

of billions of humans

49:49

and trillions of animals. Welcome

49:51

to a paradigm shift.

49:53

And then I said, thank you, thank you. I can't think

49:56

of a better, a better grace. This

49:59

feels very- You know profound

50:01

then moving and I write

50:03

as I was digging into this thing with

50:05

my knife He said no,

50:07

no, no pick it up and pry

50:09

it apart with your fingers So you can see

50:12

the the texture of this thing,

50:14

which I thought was so interesting I mean it I've never

50:16

been encouraged to you know, pick up my meat and

50:19

rip it apart and what was it like? Well

50:22

at first it was a little bit It's

50:24

like a sort of rubber ball and I was

50:26

I was kind of thinking I'm not sure what you're getting

50:28

at here But as I pulled it apart,

50:31

I saw these striated layers

50:33

of muscle That clung

50:35

to each other and pulled apart just as you pull

50:37

apart the meat on a chicken breast. So

50:40

I pull off

50:42

this little chunk and start chewing

50:44

it and It was a whole

50:46

different experience than an impossible

50:49

burger or a Beyond Meat burger

50:51

or certainly a black bean burger It

50:54

was meat

50:57

You write in the book that you keep

50:59

wondering what

51:01

will be on the table When

51:03

you hopefully visit

51:04

your grandkids for Thanksgiving

51:07

dinner in the year

51:10

Yeah,

51:15

I you know, I spent all

51:18

this time roving around the world trying

51:20

to find an answer to this question and I

51:23

arrived at I

51:25

think a probably Inappropriate

51:28

request which was to spend it with Chris and

51:30

Annie Newman. I

51:31

Would

51:35

love for Amanda to to be able to

51:38

come to our Thanksgiving

51:39

and it's like a week-long thing where people

51:41

who participate In the eating part of

51:43

Thanksgiving also participate in the provisioning part

51:46

You know lots of non-traditional foods that are prepared

51:49

by all the hands that are at that table And I

51:51

would love it to be a real real big

51:53

damn table

51:54

I love the possibility

51:56

of eating at Chris and Annie's

51:58

table

51:59

because they

52:01

want

52:03

their farm to be honoring

52:06

and producing the full spectrum

52:08

of foods that are a part

52:10

of his and Annie's family tradition. Turkey

52:13

and duck, heirloom varieties of corn

52:15

and green beans and potato grown

52:18

at the margins of their

52:20

food forests, sauces

52:21

of cranberry and elderberry,

52:24

and the plants of Chris's Piscatalean

52:27

ancestors, pawpaw, persimmon, chestnuts.

52:30

But every element will have been made

52:32

possible by the next

52:35

level technologies that he plans

52:37

to bring into his farm. You know,

52:39

it's not so much that the foods of the future will

52:41

be unrecognizable to us, but

52:44

the means by which they are grown

52:46

will be potentially totally

52:49

different from the way

52:51

that

52:51

foods have been grown in our

52:53

lifetimes.

52:55

That's Amanda Little, author of the book

52:58

The Fate of Food, What We'll Eat

53:00

in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter

53:03

World. You can watch her full talk

53:05

at TED.com.

53:09

Thank you so much for listening to

53:11

our show today called The Food Connection.

53:14

To learn more about the people who were on this episode,

53:16

go to TED.npr.org

53:19

and to see hundreds more TED Talks, check

53:21

out TED.com or the TED

53:24

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53:25

If you've been enjoying the show, we would

53:27

be so grateful if you left us a review

53:29

on Apple Podcasts. It is the best way

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53:32

reach new listeners, which we are

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really trying to do.

53:37

This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone,

53:40

Fiona Guerin, Rachel Faulkner, Deba

53:42

Motisham, and Sylvie Douglas. It

53:44

was edited by Sanaz Meshkenpour and James

53:46

De La Housie. Our production staff at

53:48

NPR also includes Jeff Rogers,

53:50

Matthew Cloutier, and Harrison

53:53

Vijay Choi. Our audio

53:55

engineer is Daniel Shukin.

53:59

Bluey. Our partners at TED are

54:02

Chris Anderson,

54:04

Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, Michelle Quint and Micah Eames. I'm

54:07

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54:09

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