The opening session featured overviews of the agricultural economic and trade reports and some pep talks from the U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, the Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Jim Miller, the USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, and the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. There was a lot of back-patting, a little bit of hand-wringing, and a strong call to students and budding farmers to embrace the future of agriculture and contribute to efforts to revitalize rural America. Some of the students asked some great questions in the day's sessions, and they really stood out as honored guests at the forum.
The plenary panel titled "Sustainability, Stakeholders & Customers: Achieving a Healthier & Secure Future" featured Nina Federoff (Advisor to U.S. Secretary of State and USAID), Fedele Bauccio (Bon Appetit Management Co.), Richard Schnieders (Sysco Corp.), and Walter Robb (Whole Foods). What a great panel! These are the ideas that really struck me most about each presentation (after the jump):
- Nina Federoff talked about changes in science and technology that will allow the U.S. to close the nutrient loop between plants and animals. She referred mostly to the integration of aquaculture and agriculture systems, but as a farm volunteer in North Carolina, we saw this integration first-hand on farms that used the waste from their chickens, goats, and cows to fertilize their rows of vegetables. One farm also started from scratch with the land: goats cleared the brush and woody undergrowth, then chickens scratched up the soil, gobbling up fat grubs, tearing up roots, and mixing in their waste. A number of years spanned from the introduction of the goats to the first sowing of seeds on this small farm, but it shows how land use changes can be done sustainably on a small scale.
- Fedele Bauccio discussed the company's journey from generic caterer and campus dining service provider to a food services provider with an envious sustainability record that incorporates local foods, organics, and higher farm worker standards. One of the greatest challenges that any business faces, and which Fedele grapples with daily, is the lack of transparency in food production. Companies like Bon Appetit often run into great difficulty in purchasing products because they can't trace individual items back to the farms on which they were grown. Both Fedele and the next speaker called for better transparency in all aspects of food production so that they can assure their customers of quality and sustainability. Bon Appetit runs one of the dining halls at Duke - I remember it being a little more expensive, but leagues better than the boring pizza/burgers/iceburg lettuce stands in some of the other halls on campus. Plus, it features some excellent ethnic flavors.
- Richard Schnieders recently retired from Sysco, so he was speaking from his own personal perspective, but he brought a lot of light to the idea of a more sustainable supply chain through life cycle assessments, local or regional aggregators for shipments, and integrating the large and the small farms to create not just a linear supply chain but a circular value network that incorporates consumer preference into food production. And he, too, called for better transparency, which will lead to better decision-making at all points of the value network.
- Walter Robb didn't tell me anything I didn't already know about Whole Foods (full disclosure: I'm a dedicated Whole Foods shopper), but I hope he educated some others in the audience who don't know as much about the company's philosophy. Yes, Whole Foods can be more expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Yes, CEO John Mackey is a wacky guy, but he's worked hard to make sustainable food a mainstream idea and contributed greatly to the movement to get consumers to think more about where food comes from and what the true costs of production are. Unfortunately, Whole Foods perpetuates the stereotype that quality, tasty, local/organic food is a yuppie concept, which these days, Mackey isn't helping to debunk. I'm not sure what the answer to this is, and Walter didn't say much to dispute it. However, he did mention a cool school lunch revolution taking place thanks to Renegade Lunch Lady Chef Ann Cooper. Check out her website, her blog, and the project's community page for more info.
