Food and Agricultural Policy Summit Brings Together Changemakers from across the Food Landscape

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The George Washington University's Global Food Institute(GFI) cohosted its first annual Food and Agriculture Policy Summit Tuesday, welcoming policymakers, researchers, advocates and experts to explore what better food systems would look like and practical, actionable steps toward building them. The event was cohosted with Food Tank, the Culinary Institute of America(CIA) and chef, humanitarian, author and GFI founder José Andrés, HON '14.

"I'm a medical sociologist by training and have done some work in food and food systems, and I am so excited that this is happening and that you all are gathered here," GW President Ellen M. Granberg told the packed summit audience at the Jack Morton Auditorium. "You're hearing from voices across the entire food landscape, from global and community leaders to farmers and students to scholars and innovators. Their perspectives may differ, but they share a common belief that, by working together, we can build a food system that nourishes both people and planet."

The daylong summit covered topics including food industry innovation, nutrition and health, climate resilience, food loss and waste and how to reimagine global humanitarian aid.

In a morning conversation with Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg, Andrés stressed the urgency of developing and implementing humane, sustainable food policies that address global hunger. The policies also need to be adaptable, he said, because in the age of rapidly evolving technology and climate change, new problems in the food landscape arise quickly and need to be addressed just as quickly.

"When a recipe doesn't work, what do I do? I change the recipes," he said. "We don't change the recipes…and new policies must be created, new recipes must be created to keep solving problems that are happening and that we don't have a response for."

Key to addressing these problems will be for policymakers to work across political and disciplinary lines and to think holistically about the challenges they hope to overcome, Andrés said. One-dimensional solutions only create more problems. An example: Shortsighted humanitarian aid programs, promoted by "America-first" politicians, that financially benefit American farmers who "dump" surplus crops in countries suffering from hunger, like Haiti. Such programs may address the problem of hunger, but they pull the rug out from under local farmers, devastating local food systems and whole economies.

"Suddenly you have tens of thousands of farmers and families, poor in a poor country already, with no crops to sell, no income to gain," Andrés said. "What they do next? They leave Haiti. Where do they end up three, four years later? In Tijuana. Trying to come where? To the country [where] they think they can eat. If you were a mother with hungry children, what would you do?

"You cannot work policy in silos. You can't. Everything has to be integrated," he said. "Humanitarian aid policy…has to go alongside immigration policies equally. Because if not, you are creating issues that [are] unintended consequences of your initial actions."

Andrés' World Central Kitchen(WCK) brings food to hunger-afflicted communities, recently supporting federal workers affected by the government shutdownand deploying to Jamaicaamid the devastation of Hurricane Melissa. But Andrés emphasized that WCK's real work is to create distribution systems those communities can use to build themselves back up after disaster.

"In the end, it's not World Central Kitchen, it's not José Andrés from Washington feeding anybody in Jamaica," he said. "It's the people of Jamaica who are going to be feeding the people of Jamaica."

Other panels and speeches throughout the day featured guests and speakers from the federal government, including U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) and Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.); chefs and farmers from the Washington, D.C., area and across the country; representatives from major corporations like Instacart; and major voices in food research and thought, including New York University Professor Emerita Marion Nestle and culinary historian Michael Twitty. A panel with leaders and stakeholders from Washington, D.C.-area community organizations, moderated by Planet Forward founder and Alliance for a Sustainable Future Executive Director Frank Sesno, emphasized GW's rootedness in its home city.

GW alumni also participated as attendees and event leaders, including Food Tank cofounder Bernard Pollack, B.A.'02, M.A.'03, and Culinary Institute of America's Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Industry Leadership and Impact Robert E. Jones, M.A. '04.

"Feeding 10 Billion," a morning conversation about meeting the nutritional challenges of today and those expected by 2050, was representative in its lively and nuanced approach to complex problems by panelists Zacharey Carmichael, a senior economist at the World Bank; Anna Nelson, executive director of the Food Security Leadership Council; Roy Steiner, senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation's Food Initiative; and Johan Swinnen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute. The discussants broke down specific numbers (Swinnen estimated that the environmental and human health costs of our current global food systems are equivalent to about $10 trillion a year) but also reminded attendees of shared, achievable goals.

"The first basic [question] here in food is 'Does every child born on this earth have the right to food, to a healthy diet?'" Nelson said. "Let's not overthink it. The answer is yes."

Watch all the panels, fireside chats and keynotes from the summit here.

Global Food Institute Hosts Experts Building Better Food Systems