Blogs

From an idea in a living room six years ago, Mundo Verde PCS has grown into a nurturing environment for 538 students in Washington, DC, with two buildings, cisterns, raised vegetable beds, and nearly 100 full-time staff. It is a school, yet so much more. Serving students from PreK – 4th grade, Mundo Verde is an Ashoka Changemaker School and recipient of the Secretary of Education’s Green Ribbon School award. I am honored to have been involved as a founding board member and now as designer and champion of the TeachFood! program.

Five years ago today, as the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown were still emerging, The New York Times published my letter observing that “trust comes not from repeated and paternalistic proclamations of success, but rather from the humble admission of mistakes followed by demonstrable changes in behavior and attitude.”

Across the American presidential campaign landscape, change might look like a neo-fascist with a toupee, a scrappy septuagenarian democratic socialist, or the familiar face of a woman who might become our first female president. Quite a spectacle we present to the world.

"If Chipotle is going to continue to provide an alternative model to processed, industrial food, it needs to also be at the forefront of creating systems to support that new approach, such as offering its employees paid sick days. Chipotle and its customers are now paying the price for leadership not having made that connection for 20-years before offering paid sick-leave in 2015.” - Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Forbes (January 6, 2016)

Pondering the categories and labels that we come to accept as fixed and true.

Chipotle lost about one-third of its pork supply early in 2015 and signs popped-up in roughly 500 restaurants announcing that “carnitas” was unavailable. From the corporate HQ, PR Director Chris Arnold positioned his company’s handling of this supply shortfall as evidence that it stands behind its brand that promises “food with integrity.” Indeed, Chipotle did the right thing in deciding to curtail purchases from a supplier that violated its animal welfare pledges and in refusing to substitute substandard product to make up for that shortfall. But...

Jonathan J. Halperin in Forbes (January 16, 2015)

Beginning with a presentation at the FMI/GMA Sustainability Summit in August, I’ve been engaged for months in an intense set of ongoing conversations about food: past, present, and future.

The words we use reflect the extent to which our thinking is clear or muddled. Speaker after speaker at The New York Times conference at Stone Barns on Food for Tomorrow spoke to the issue of words and meaning.

As we recover from our annual Halloween sugar binge, worth $2.4 billion to the candy industry, rumblings of change can be heard from every corner of the food system.

I led a discussion on sugar and public health with Rob Lustig, Laurie David, Emily Luchetti and Cindy Gershen.

“Fresh as the month of May” is how Philip Morris introduced the iconic Marlboro Man in 1955, based on a photograph of a real cowboy from Life Magazine.

From earthquakes and mudslides in Chile, Japan and California; from droughts across America’s fruit and vegetable heartland; to flooding in Pakistan and creeping lava in Hawaii as well as a smoking volcano in Iceland; from killings in Ferguson, Missouri, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; from the collapse of the state in Libya and the rise of the Islamic State across the Middle East; from Gaza to the Golan Heights one could be forgiven for feeling that things are coming unstuck.

I really like sugar. I know too much sugar is bad for me. FedUp, the new movie, is very sobering.

In 2012, a little bakery just north of New York City became the first business licensed in New York State as a Benefit Corporation. (External Blog, The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation)

This year’s CERES conference in Boston was provocative and challenging -- as it should be in celebration of 25 years of creative, innovative, and collaborative advocacy to bring greater openness and accountability to corporate behavior. And it is behavior, of course, that needs to change; openness and accountability are only the tools of the trade in modifying corporate practices.

Since participating recently in the UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk, and in preparing for the Sustainable Land & Water Program Expert Workshop in Amsterdam on Friday, I’ve been thinking more about risk as fundamental conceptual framework for making meaningful comparisons and connections.

I am comforted by the awareness that changes we dismiss as inconceivable are often viewed by historians as having been inevitable. A Happy New Year might thus include news of the following momentous changes.

Video for the first two morning panels of The James Beard Foundation 2013 Food Conference (The Paradox of Appetite: Hungering for Change, Oct. 21-22) appears below. For the entire two-day's proceedings, visit the James Beard Foundation's 3013 Food Conference video channel.

With more than 47,000,000 Americans only able to buy their next meal because they are on SNAP, formerly Food Stamps, one wonders where these people live. 47 million sure sounds like a big number. But where are they?

The story of hunger in America is quite instructive, and as the radical right plays financial chicken with the federal budget and the good faith and credit of the United States, 47,000,000 citizens wonder where they will find their next meal. In an America where compassion remains a core value, this is only possible because people have differing visions of reality.

As summer slowly releases its muggy grip on the nation’s capitol, I had an opportunity to talk with the Israeli ambassador to the United State, Michael Oren. With the civil war in Syria propelled to front and center, he reminded us that “it’s the neighborhood we live in.”

Speaking truth to power rarely happens. But with four members of the SNAP Alumni network in the halls of Congress last week it did.

In a rare series of events on Capitol Hill yesterday, and continuing today, the real experts on hunger in America met with senior members of Congress and their staffs.

Rich and deep conversations are the hallmark of CERES conferences and this year in San Francisco was no exception, as CERES looks forward to its 25th anniversary in 2014.

I have buses on my mind – lots and lots of school buses sitting in parking lots all over the world.

Implementation, not definition, is the challenge for sustainability today.

As Representative Jim McGovern said from the floor of the House of Representatives a few days before president Obama’s State of the Union last evening, “Hunger is a political condition.”

Richard Stone has produced a provocative and important new documentary on nuclear power that was screened this week at the Sundance Film Festival. But as important as it is, Pandora’s Promise is a film that in its current configuration undermines itself.