110: Exploring the global challenges affecting our food system with Food Tank President Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank, has spent spent two years visiting more than 35 countries, including sub-saharan Africa and Asia, investigating environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger and poverty. She’s also explored extensively the impact of COVID-19 in the US and how the domestic food policy could, and should, change as a result. In this podcast, her unique insight gives us a picture of the global challenges affecting our food system, and the ways in which we can address them.

From sustainable farming, to governmental policy changes that can help our environment, to changes we each can make individually that will make a significant contribution to a more sustainable food system, Danielle provides a comprehensive look at how the industry can create a brighter, healthier food future.

Food Tank is for the 7 billion people who have to eat every day. We will offer solutions and environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty by creating a network of connections and information for all of us to consume and share. Food Tank is for farmers and producers, policy makers and government leaders, researchers and scientists, academics and journalists, and the funding and donor communities to collaborate on providing sustainable solutions for our most pressing environmental and social problems.

Food Tank highlights hope and success in agriculture. We feature innovative ideas that are already working on the ground, in cities, in kitchens, in fields and in laboratories. These innovations need more attention, more research, and ultimately more funding to be replicated and scaled-up. And that is where we need you. We all need to work together to find solutions that nourish ourselves and protect the planet.

In 2013, Danielle Nierenberg co-founded Food Tank with Bernard Pollack, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Food Tank is a global convener, research organization, and non-biased creator of original research impacting the food system.

Danielle also conducts extensive on-the-ground research, traveling to more than 70 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. She has met with thousands of farmers and farmers’ groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, as well as journalists, documenting what’s working to help alleviate hunger and poverty while protecting the environment.

Her knowledge of global agriculture issues has been cited widely in more than 20,000 major print and broadcast outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CBS This Morning, The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Le Monde (France), the Mail and Guardian (South Africa), the East African (Kenya), TIME magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, Voice of America, the Times of India, the Sydney Morning Herald, and hundreds more.

Danielle is the recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award.

She has an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and spent two years volunteering for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic.