Eating In Trumps Eating Out

In an article last week, I discussed data that shows that a farmer receives a dwindling portion of the consumer food dollar in the US. The data does not explain the ratio of whole foods to processed or prepared foods purchased, but one person who commented on that post attempted to reason, “The farmers' share has fallen because consumers are choosing to eat out more and buying food in more highly processed forms. If we all want to return to buying raw food at markets and spending hours preparing it then the farmers' share can go up.” This is an understandable, if uninformed, take on why farmers aren’t winning in the current food economy, but it misses what’s really going on: Americans spend significantly more money on food they eat at home than they do on food they eat out.



Since 1929, when the USDA dataset begins, disposable income spent on food-away-from-home has increased more than five times faster than has disposable income spent on food-at-home. There is no question that the market for restaurants, prepared food, and food service blew up in the second half of the twentieth century. But the food-at-home market is still 42% bigger than the market for food that is consumed away from home, and it has been that way since the early 2000s. Furthermore, the ratio of dollars spent on food-at-home to dollars spent on food-away-from-home has been especially stable in recent years. Cathy Erway and her ilk, who are trying to shift even more consumption back into the home, might take comfort in that statistic, even if they have a lot of territory to cover to get us back to our early-1900s habits. Even in this era of idolizing chefs, restaurants, and food experiences, we still spend more money on food that we eat at home than we do on food outside of the home.

That means that the data to which I referred last week is not just a reflection of people paying someone else to prepare their food. I posit that what is really going on is that stale supply chains make it nearly impossible for farmers to reach consumers, and that because of the lack of choice in market channels, consolidators, wholesalers, and distributors can earn a huge amount of money, even though most on-lookers would say they don’t add a whole lot of value. Those intermediaries skew the portion of the consumer dollar that goes to the farmer for producing the food, tending the land that gave up that food, and managing the risk and decisions involved with sustaining a crop.

In response to intermediaries eating into food dollars, farmers have attempted to reach consumers directly through farmers’ markets and CSAs, and consumers show a growing interest in forging that connection with the farm and their food. That the number of farmers’ markets in the US has increased 114% in the last decade, to 6,132 markets around the country, suggests that consumers have an interest in getting their whole dollar to the farmer, rather than paying a store to keep its lights on.

Consumers, take comfort. You have a direct hand in farmers getting more of the credit for the food you eat. But you have to start with knowing whom you empower to feed you.


This piece also appears at www.zocalofood.com/blog.

The Balance of Food Profits: Whom Do You Really Pay For Your Food?

The USDA tracks the value of domestic food expenditures, and also reports what portion of the consumer dollar goes toward labor, packaging, intercity transportation, fuel, pre-tax corporate profits, and farmers. The difference between what the consumer pays and what the farmer gets is called the marketing bill (look at the pink line in the graph). The marketing bill, which “covers processing, wholesaling, transportation, retailing costs, and profits”, or any function beyond the farm but before the household, has been climbing upward since the start of the dataset, in 1967, which means the farmers’ share has been on the decline.



The components of the marketing bill show that, from 1970 to 2006, labor, packaging, fuel, corporate profit, and miscellaneous items (like advertising and promotion, local for-hire transportation, and rent) increased relative to consumer spending, while fuel costs fell slightly relative to spending. The portion of a consumer dollar that a farmer receives fell the most dramatically in relation to consumer spending on food: in 1970, a farmer captured 32.10% of the consumer dollar; in 2006, she got just 18.53%.





These trends suggest that over the last 40 years, it has become more expensive to get food to market. It is worthwhile to note that the farmers’ share of the dollar begins to decrease significantly in the 1980s, right around the time that alternative market channels like farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) started gaining popularity. Is it any surprise that farmers would seek the closer connection to consumers that these other economic models afford in a world in which almost all of the functions involved in connecting consumers with their food got a raise while farmers who actually produced the food got, in essence, wage cuts?

Some would say that the functions involved in the food supply chain beyond food production add significant value – the aggregation of supply, the processing, the wholesaling, the marketing, the advertising, the research and development, the store shelves and employees. But perhaps we’re moving beyond the need for those functions as a costly component of our food. The internet levels, liberates, and democratizes industries and supply chains. We should unleash it for the benefit of our farmers and our eaters, instead of continuing to pay for “value” that I, frankly, have a hard time valuing.

This post also appears at www.zocalofood.com/blog.

Finding the Sacred and the Satirical in our Food

Were you as stunned as I was to hear that Stephen Colbert was going to appear at a House Subcommittee Hearing to discuss his views on farm labor? I’m used to Willie speaking out on behalf of farmers, but that seems to fit his image rather well. Colbert, on the other hand, seems like a guy whose free market politics would steer him clear of any sort of stumping for US agriculture. To listen to his commentary was to understand that he was there to draw attention to the need for basic rights and fair treatment of farm workers, and not to contemplate what kind of capitalist he is (here’s his explanation of why he showed up). And what better testament to the urgency, gravity, and complexity of our food challenges than to hear a white entertainer in a suit ask us to consider the people responsible for getting food to our tables.

The testimony from both Colbert and Arturo Rodriguez of the United Farm Workers remind us that, really, we have no idea what we’re eating, whose bottom line we’re supporting, or what agenda we are inadvertently furthering with our food dollars. Just as I dispute the FDA’s claim that genetically modified salmon is not materially different from non-GMO salmon, I contend that not every tomato (or apple, carrot, or bean) is equal. Quite the contrary, we try to simplify our markets by commoditizing food, but we have reached a time and place where the slightest differentiating factor, from what kind of fertilizer was used on the field, to the origin of the seed, can affect the price, market destination, and end use of a crop.

Let’s think about this. Say that two peaches were placed before you – same variety, same harvest date. You were assured that one had been sprayed with an insecticide that had run off into an underground stream that would ultimately affect water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, all the while using as close to forced labor as the US comes. The other peach had come from a neighboring field, where the farmer used integrated pest management that required a quarter of the insecticide and thus added only a fraction of the groundwater pollution as her neighbor, and farm laborers were paid a decent wage. How much more would you pay to eat the second peach instead of the first?

As this over-simplified example demonstrates, by not knowing, we can unwittingly participate in something we’d rather not. I’d like to think that farmers’ markets could solve the information problem, but unfortunately they are not only inaccessible to a large portion of the population, but they are also mired in their own struggles for transparency. And so, without easy access to information, we make decisions that are less than optimal for ourselves and for others.

The question comes down to what you know about your food. To know is to acknowledge the sacred in food, what theologian Ellen Davis describes as a way of thinking about food that honors the people, animals, and elements that cultivated and harvested the food. It’s what we mean to do when we pray at meal time.

However, the fact that so few of us know the story of our food is due in large part to how the food system is set up. From cotton traders in India to spinach packers in California, the dominant view is that markets are more efficient if the consumer doesn’t know.

Herein lies the contradiction, and thus the satire. The stuff we depend on day in and day out, for energy and wellness, to sustain our physical, and often our emotional and spiritual, being is the stuff we know so little about we’re making choices that actually defeat the purpose of food: to nourish. No wonder Colbert found an angle on all of this – we are acting the fool. And so, I leave you with one question. Whom are you empowering to feed you?


This piece also appears on Zocalo.

Chaos at the Farmers’ Market

This story in the Wall Street Journal about a farmers’ market debate that is raging (can anything really rage at a farmers’ market?) in Wisconsin and across the country reminds me how much is wrong with how we choose our food. It reports that even our best alternative to supermarkets, our closest approximation to traceability in our food supply, can’t provide us the assurances we ask of it. Meanwhile, some half-cocked ideas are floating around about how to make farmers’ markets stricter, less accessible, and heavier on bureaucracy and process.

Who needs more of that, especially farmers? Cross checking seed receipts to verify that a farmer grew what he is peddling, inspecting farms to make sure they’re growing what they said they were, lots of pencil and paper work overseen by resource-constrained market managers? How in the world can this be the extent of our food alternatives? There must be a better way to get the comfort we receive from believing that a real farmer grew real food that we browse while a country music cover band takes us back to another time, when people had no choice but to farm.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I shop at my neighborhood’s Saturday market when I can. But I don’t enjoy it for anything but the outcome: a great selection of fresh foods in which I have a higher degree of confidence than I do in food I get from the grocery store. I think the farmers’ market is just about the least efficient way to get our food (and research from Cornell Cooperative Extension suggests that it is just about the least efficient way to sell food too), much less gain transparency into how that food was produced. If you’re lucky, you’ll actually get to talk to the farmer when you show up at the farm stand. But if the farmer is successful, she will be selling at multiple markets on the same Saturday morning, reducing your chances of meeting the woman with the dirt under her fingers. If she’s really successful, her sunny day will be better spent on the farm.

At the heart of this debate are questions about what a farmers’ market should be, what it turns out to be, and who gets to decide. For some, the farmers’ market is about community, an opportunity to socialize with neighbors and farmers, a pastime. For others, both buyers and sellers, it is business. Still, direct sales of food from farmer to consumer represented just 1.1% of food purchases in the US in 2009.

Two recent articles published in Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems discuss research that shows that even though consumers pay significant premiums on farmers’ market produce, if labor costs are taken into account farmers are only slightly better off selling at farmers’ markets, if they are better off at all. An article on Grist suggests that New York State farmer Morse Pitts has no long-term incentive to continue selling at the Union Square Farmers’ Market. By Pitts’ calculations, he makes just $7 an hour selling at the market, even though his customers pay a pretty penny to buy greens directly from him.

Furthermore, markets suffer from both consumer and farmer upward mobility. As Salon reports, farmers in Lancaster County that could gain access to higher-paying Philadelphia markets chose to go there instead of continuing with a community food access project in their own county. Isn’t that the rational thing to do? The problem is that consumers in small towns and communities with lower ability and willingness to pay are not just economically but also geographically excluded from the market for direct-from-farm food. If we could resolve the geographic boundaries of transacting in fresh food, as we've done with markets for commodities, perhaps we could achieve better equality of access.

Some farmers that sell at market do gain a lot from interacting with customers. They hear about what people like, what they don’t, how they’re using the produce. They get some satisfaction from meeting their loyal customers, from educating people new to the market, and from spending time with peer farmers. Is there a way to retain the good in farmers’ markets – the community, the interaction, the access to an array of (what we think is) farms’ fresh produce – but gain insight into the authenticity and quality of farms and food, the mystery of which has caused this Wisconsin tiff?

The farmers’ market fills a true need that is underscored by data from the USDA that shows the number of markets in the US has nearly doubled in the last eight years. So, the market brings us something that nothing else does yet: an array of fresh, whole food the source of which we generally trust; a choice in what quantities and assortment of that food we want; direct contact between farms and consumers. I spend my days thinking about a better way to accomplish this, but for now, I’ll take what I can get.


This piece also appears at Zocalo.

What the Farm Gives: A Morning at the Wholesale Farmers’ Market

By 6:30 yesterday morning, I was chatting with Jack Hoeffner, one of the farmers who sells at the Wholesale Farmers’ Market at Hunt’s Point in the Bronx. New York City’s Greenmarket had organized a two-hour buyers’ tour to introduce farmers and customers, and to attract attention to the market, which came under Greenmarket’s purview just last year. The drive up from Brooklyn, a mecca of sorts for good foodies in this city, was seamless at that hour, but my first smile of the day was when one of the entrance guards explained that, you know, he didn’t see too many ladies up here. When you’re about to spend a few hours with some old school vegetable growers, you may as well start off old school.

This market is a place where farmers can sell directly to wholesale buyers like restaurants, corner grocery stores, and small-scale food processors. Today there were nine sellers, their white trucks scattered across the parking lot, with bags of corn and onions, and boxes of potatoes, peppers, and cucumbers stacked on the concrete. The farmers are here because selling at this market allows them to sell in bulk but at an agreeable price and without much distribution responsibility.

Hoeffner, who farms in Montgomery, New York, and whose family has been in the business for five generations, attributes the challenges of the small farmer to reckless markets. In a traditional wholesale market, he might make an agreement to sell a box of cabbage for $10, but by the end of the day the market clearing price is $8 per box, and he is forced to give up those $2 in order to keep buyers coming back to the market. That price unpredictability would be okay if he benefited from the up-side as often as he suffered from the down-side, but the reality is that if he makes an agreement to sell at $10 and the price goes up to $12 over the course of the day, he is stuck with his original deal. Hoeffner sells at the Wholesale Farmers’ Market because here, at least, the spot market for his products exists and he takes what he can get, without the risk of his buyers renegotiating a price.

The Greenmarket gives these farmers, many of whom are beyond middle age, access to marketing and sales opportunities that they would otherwise lack. These are not guys who are going to serve the unique needs of dozens of different buyers or contract their production with big companies, but they do want to sell in a fair and efficient way to customers that value their products. The market succeeds at pulling farmers and buyers together, but as Shayna Cohen, who organized the event, pointed out, growing the market is “a chicken and egg thing.” You don’t get farmers to come to the market unless there are buyers, and buyers won’t be there unless the farmers are.

Talking with Hoeffner exposes how much dissonance there is between farmers’ ability to sell fresh, whole foods and apparent demand for it. Restaurant buyers may claim to want seasonal, local produce on their menus, but the reality is that buying from nearby farmers a few months of the year can jeopardize relationships with national distributors that deliver peaches and tomatoes all year round. “When you farm, you sell what the farm gives up,” Hoeffner says. This mentality of taking what the land, and hence the market, offers does not extend to most restaurant buyers and consumers. We have been conditioned to expect that we can get what we want, when we want it.

Back home in Brooklyn, it’s easy to think that the future of healthy, whole food and efficient markets for that food are in our immediate future, and it’s easy to forget that the farmers we rely on for that food face an uncertain future. From day to day, they don’t know who will be at the markets and how much those customers will need. From week to week, they don’t know what crop prices will do, so they guess at the most advantageous times to harvest and sell their products. From year to year, they try to compete with huge makers and movers of food.

If we are going to strengthen and promote a network of regional foodsheds, not to the absolute exclusion of broader trade but with a core value of ensuring stable farm communities in proximity to our cities, we need to rethink how we define a dependable food supply. Does dependability mean getting the same assortment of products day in and day out, or does it mean having the agility to respond to the market, the season, and the farmer to incorporate a changing array of foods into our lives and menus?

Instead of trying to control and correct for diversity in our food supply, we should embrace it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we should never, ever eat pineapple in January. I’m saying that to revitalize small- and medium-sized farms in this country, we first have to shift our mental models, accept some degree of variation in our food supply, and adjust accordingly our expectations of what farmers like Hoeffner and his cohorts deliver.

Open Data in Agriculture and Why It Matters

The farmer usually knows best – for his or her land, crop, livestock, and profitability, among other things. As a girl on a Minnesota farm in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I was in awe of my grandfather’s ability to know just what his beef cattle needed – more water, richer pasture, better nutrients – and to have a crop rotation schedule seemingly in his head. It was as though my Granddad could feel his way through the unpredictability of weather, supply and demand, and price fluctuations to make the optimal decisions for his operation.

A couple of years ago I was with him on his farm when the cows were getting checked for pregnancy. He sat in the middle of the cattle yard while cow after cow ran through the chute. After each check, the cowboy gave a signal to indicate the cow’s status, and Granddad jotted down on a spreadsheet the results that would later that evening get saved to someone’s hard drive. What could I build, I thought to myself, that would make this process easier, and link the data that emerged from this days-long affair with other information from the farm itself, the region, and the markets to help my family make even smarter operating choices?

It’s a question that participants from across the food sector have pondered for years, and to which new information technology is beginning to provide answers. With capabilities like social media that offers instantaneous mini-reports, remote sensing that announces field-level conditions, and user-generated mapping that offers an on-the-ground view of production, merchandising, and consumption activity, we are beginning to get the tools at our fingertips to optimize decision-making with connected, real-time information, not just intuition. Farm management software, mobile applications, and web-based tools are increasingly available to farmers around the world and present an opportunity for us to understand and act on the global interconnections among food, agriculture, water, energy, soil, farm profitability, and human nutrition as never before.

I do not want farmers’ wisdom to evaporate in the face of technology. Quite the contrary, I want that specialized knowledge of acre, crop, and herd to be augmented and preserved. Agricultural and food system data is important because it lets us see what we couldn’t see before, and in a world in which the expertise to sustain our food supply lives in the minds and senses of aging farmers, I would like to see a 21st century agricultural revolution that builds on farmers’ talent and perception to capture and interpret newly available signals from the ecosystem.

Imagine, for example, that a farmer needs to decide how much to irrigate during a drought. It's a decision that affects just his farm in the short run, but has systemic costs and benefits. If the farmer could connect historical commodity prices, weather charts, financial and environmental costs, and soil conditions to assess the trade-offs in the choice he makes, he could complement his highly refined intuition with the long-term effects that his decision has on his farm and beyond. The more widely information and tools like this are available, the more optimal decisions participants can make throughout the food system.

Opening up food and agricultural data requires an information architecture and infrastructure that does not currently exist. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization is a leader in providing easily accessible, highly usable, and surprisingly current data, but right now it is far ahead of the pack in terms of transparency in reporting. The USDA released its Open Government Plan in April and the possibilities the agency’s data presents for developers and entrepreneurs are many. However, there exists no single platform for coordinating the numerous strands of measurements, probabilities, risks, and fluctuations in real-time. We need to build toward a high level of integration and openness in data in order to truly be stewards of the land and sustainable producers and consumers of agricultural products.

At a time when food is becoming a political issue instead of being discussed as the fundamental need that it is, we must access competing data and analysis to inform the investment, innovation, and policy behind food production and consumption. To transform data into metrics that empower decision-making across the food system, we need to get a broad spectrum of actors in the sector to communicate and collaborate. Let this essay serve as a call for a networked food system that harnesses and applies robust information through data generation, database architecture, open research and collaboration, and agile, relevant metrics, in pursuit of more efficient, more sustainable, more productive food and farming.

What's in a Name? The Power to Shift the Food System

I can’t help it. Food comes up in my conversations all the time. Whether I am at a conference for sustainable agriculture or at my neighborhood watering hole, the people I meet are paying attention to their food in a way that should perk the ears of anyone who produces, markets, distributes, sells, prepares, or buys food. These conversations should get your attention because they reflect a desire to reject a mainstay of the food industry – traditional food labeling, in favor of radical transparency.

Recently, two articles have brought to light the risks and challenges of transparency in food systems. David Karp’s article in the L.A. Times, “Fruit Varietals: Identity Crisis in the Produce Aisle”, describes how fruit varieties get mixed together for the simplicity of the supply chain and in order to prevent customer confusion. As Karp writes, for the produce industry, the value of veiling details about fresh produce is in efficient operations and subdued consumers.

The produce industry is not alone in favoring streamlined over customized operations. When I was working with a big commodity merchant last summer, there was significant concern that if textile customers knew the origin of a particular kind of cotton, they would begin to have sharpened tastes and, if they liked a specific region’s cotton one season, might demand it to the exclusion of other varieties or geographies next season. This picky customer would create chaos in global trading relationships and pricing because, if next year cotton from a different region is superior but the customer wants what he got last year, demand favors an inferior product.

Karp suggests that grocers are worried about the “educated customer” problem too. What a risk it would be if I got Pink Lady apples last month, loved them, and demanded my grocer get them again this month, even though they are expensive and out of season! I daresay, with the right information provided to them in the right format, people are smart enough to figure out that the best produce today might not be the best next week or next year. We’re already trained to think this way with some foods. Who buys pomegranates in the summer months, or corn on the cob in January? We get it. Tell us what is good now, and let us figure out what we want for ourselves. Karp rightly states that doing so would allow “good products [to] be rewarded with increased demand and higher prices, and inferior ones [to] fall by the wayside.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times article “Genetically Altered Salmon Set to Move Closer to Your Table” describes how a genetically modified fish could get approved by the FDA and show up unidentified in grocery store freezers next to, shall we say, authentic salmon. My first reaction is, “Label it!” (To clarify, in general, I think static labeling is insufficient, but here we are talking about whether or not to even distinguish “real” from “altered”).

If consumers are given enough information to determine what’s what, who cares whether the FDA decides to let this fish go to market? They will do their best to conclude whether these highly efficient protein producers are safe, but they cannot possibly be expected to anticipate the long-term effects of a genetically modified fish. If consumers have at their fingertips sufficient information to understand the choices they make with their food dollars, then collective intelligence and preference will decide whether to keep AquaBounty’s product on store shelves.

If a stable food system is one in which farmers produce what consumers want, consumers know what they’re getting, and consumers’ decisions influence farmers’ production plans, then full disclosure seems necessary. What would it take to get there? It will take more than the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” campaign, the USDA’s well-intentioned effort to connect Americans to the farm, because we need to rely on real-time data. But data takes time, and time is money. As Karp reports, farmers do not have the incentive or are too fatigued to sort fruit by varietal, much less track field-level statistics.

It’s understandable that farmers are tired – if they sell their products directly, they are not only farmers but also marketers, distributors, and, increasingly, social media strategists. Technology is evolving that can help. Products like Stickybits connect digital content with a physical product, allowing food manufacturers, marketers, and farmers to tell a more complex story than nutritional values and ingredient lists can. Similarly, Leitha Matz of FreshDirect sees online food retail as a way to provide greater depth of information than is available on a sign inside a grocery store. She sees personalized, transparent information through the website as a key factor in FreshDirect’s commitment to supporting both farmers and customers.

The question of how we identify our agricultural products comes down to whether we believe that such products are differentiated. For decades, even specialty crops have been lumped together in name, price, and path to market. However, as food sustainability and transparency efforts make headway, we’re starting to realize that nothing that the earth produces is undifferentiated. Each peach has its own flavor. Each tree has particular nutrient needs. Each acre gets its own sunlight and irrigation. Each farmer has her own practices and philosophy of farming. And each hungry person has a unique combination of flavor palette, health profile, and willingness to pay. How can we possibly consider agricultural production to be a commodity?

Traceability and transparency are essential to healthy food systems because without them, consumers have little say in the food they choose to buy, except through niche certifications like organic (which I find more and more of my peers distrust). If we could see, at the moment of our purchase decisions, the system that we empower to feed us, then our dollars could begin to align with our nutritional, environmental, social, and cultural desires. Until then, I grudgingly trust food supply chains that are not merely veiled but curtained.

Right now, the only people with the drawstring on this picture are big food retailers that can demand their suppliers give them rigorous information so that they, in turn, can provide it to customers, and farms that see the economic value and vast marketing potential of offering deeper transparency through technology. In an era when consumers increasingly want information about pesticide use, fertilizer type, irrigation level, soil pH, nutritional value, long-term economic costs, and social tradeoffs in their food, I’m putting my money on the farmers.

Some see radical transparency as a costly burden (which, if done with paper and pen, physical labels, and manual sorting, it is), but I firmly believe that with the information infrastructure that exists today radical transparency is not only possible but necessary. Yes, I think that the companies that refuse to throw the curtain back on food products are in for a big surprise, as the companies that embrace the data, consumer insight, and brand evolution that comes with full disclosure thrive. Why? Because those companies will be in constant communication with everyone they touch, from their farmers to their customers. To my way of thinking, that describes an engaged, responsive, and agile company that will survive the 21st century.


This piece is cross-posted at Zocalo and The Huffington Post.

Food and Technology: Learning from our past and defining our future

On a recent Tuesday night, the back room at Jimmy’s No. 43 in the East Village is packed with foodies and techies, researchers and entrepreneurs, filmmakers and activists. The group has converged for “Five on Food #2”, the monthly event from Meetup.com’s food+tech group. We are there because we believe that technology can disrupt habitual behavior, points of reference, and mindsets, and that just such a disruption is needed if we are going to achieve sustainability in food and agriculture.

When Will Turnage takes the stage to talk about what the combination of food and technology means to him, and how he weaves the two fields together in his daily life, the group nods when he talks about being a developer, and cheers when he announces that he keeps bees. Turnage’s combination of technical expertise, passion for food, and commitment to combining the two in ways that are good for people and the environment, is a common theme among members. However, Turnage, who helped to develop the Ratio application that accompanies Michael Ruhlman’s book by the same name, suggests that the point of technology is to reacquaint us with the instinct and intuition we have lost. He wants to give people the tools they need to get comfortable in the kitchen again.

Daniel Bowman Simon, of the People's Garden NYC, also reminds us that we are not new here. On stage, he produces a photocopy of a 1917 city pamphlet promoting school gardens. Ironic, he says, given how he has had to hit the street to get people to sign his petition to ask Mayor Bloomberg to put a garden in front of City Hall. Simon says he likes making the face-to-face connection with potential supporters first, having them sign, and then following up with an e-mail (in other words, technology enhances the connection but does not establish it). So far, 5,000 people have signed; he wants 8 million signatures. “That’s how many it would take for it to be unanimous,” he says. Simon reminds us that where we are trying to go might not be so far from where we, or at least our ancestors, have been before.

Because of technology, we now have the potential to see the systems around us in new ways. Wendy Brawer of Greenmap.org arrives with symbols printed on bright orange paper. These symbols, she says, are the iconography that helps connect communities around the world to sustainability resources. The open mapping project, which she has led since the early ‘90s (it started on paper, she reminds me), allows cities, organizations, and individuals to create their own maps, which Brawer believes are the missing link in delineating and communicating the issues around food sustainability. She has gotten us a long way toward visualizing the activities, concepts, and needs that shape our local, regional, and global perspective on food systems.

Leitha Matz, who is Senior Content Manager at Fresh Direct, is another presenter this evening who is keen to offer a new level of transparency into food. She reminds the group that food and technology can sometimes be used to describe mega food corporations. However, this group interprets the combination much differently. For us, “food+tech” describes the potential that innovative technology, from iPhone applications and social networks, to GPS and e-commerce, has to restore a healthful, regenerative food system.

At Fresh Direct, Matz has been part of the effort to double the amount of local produce that the online grocer offers. In her view, online grocery has an opportunity for transparency that traditional retail lacks: it’s hard to put on the shelf the integrated pest management and other sustainable farming practices of farms like Red Jacket Orchards, but it is possible to tell a more complex story with digital content. Matz reminds us that this is a “wonderful moment” for consumer information. Though this is nowhere near a sales pitch, Matz’s talk suggests that radical transparency in food is possible.

Stephanie Beack is a farmer’s daughter. With a business degree and a professional background in tech, she says, “I firmly believe in the way technology can change lives.” For Beack, the transformation of food happens in the kitchen. Her site, Scrumptious Street, started two years ago because for her, getting healthy, sustainable food into the home is a way to change mindsets about how we eat. Beack suggests, as she closes her talk, that technology enables food.

But doesn’t food enable technology as well? If not for a stable and healthful food supply, we would not have the wherewithal to pursue the technological innovation that improves connectivity among people and throughout ecosystems. The essential nature of food makes it our most urgent challenge to resolve. As I step into the crowd after the presentations, I have great confidence that the creativity, enthusiasm, and commitment of the people in this room will, through unique applications of technology, change how we understand the future of food.