[MUSIC]
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Some
people eat to live and some people live to eat.
I am definitely the later.
In other words, I have been a life long foodie.
I'm sure most of you have fond childhood memories, a first bicycle, or
a lemonade stand.
My fondest memory takes me back to when I was three years old.
Recovering from the flu, my mother had forbidden me from eating mangoes, but
my grandmother snuck me one anyway.
And I remember ecstatically running out of the kitchen,
mango all over my face, and straight into my mother.
>> [LAUGH] >> I told her I hadn't eaten any mangoes,
of course, and [LAUGH] even she couldn't help but smile.
Reflecting on my childhood, I am flooded with memories like this.
Memories connecting food with a love so ingrained in my upbringing
that I could not conceive of human suffering stemming from hunger.
But this changed when I visited my father's ancestral village and
met the children of some of his childhood friends, my peers,
enrolled in schools just for the meal programs.
In stark contrast, walking through the dining commons at Penn State
barely a few days later, I saw trays full of food being thrown away.
And I remember feeling appalled at the amount of food that was being wasted.
That was the moment I realized that our food systems are broken.
But it's not just the disparity between what we don't have and what we throw away.
We see ample evidence of our broken food systems right here
in our own supermarkets.
I'm sure most of you are used to seeing this.
But coming from a culture where a milk man brought us one type of milk along
with a cow to our house every morning, this dairy fridge took me from odd
confusion faster than a Tesla can go from 0 to 60.
>> [LAUGH] >> But
this fridge exists to cater to a wider array of consumer preferences,
because you and I don't make food choices the same way.
You could be thinking about health outcomes and buying organic food.
You could be thinking about environmental sustainability and going local.
You could be thinking about economic fairness and going fair trade.
And the folks at the back could be thinking about intangibles like taste
or color.
>> [COUGH] >> I like to think of this as our
food value hierarchy.
But most of us share one fundamental value in this hierarchy.
I'm sure you all know what it is, price.
Food retailers due as well.
So low cost has been a predominant driver in this industry for decades.
But as some of the other values have started rising in importance,
food retailers are extremely slow to catch up, why is that?
What is it that needs to be fixed?
So I asked the GSB community to tell me what they thought needed to be fixed,
what was broken with out food system and how they would fix it.
Wave a magic wand, as it were.
And then I went and spoke to thought leaders and
food advocates actually working to reform the food system.
80% of the GSB community that I spoke to said that healthy
food was inaccessible, unaffordable or environmentally unsustainable.
The food advocates agreed.
But I want to frame this problem slightly differently.
How is it possible that a vegetable that is grown halfway across the world
can be produced, harvested, packaged, marketed,
transported, and distributed at a price point that is cheaper
than a vegetable that is grown sustainably just miles from here?
The answer is simpler than you think.
The food we eat is so
cheap, because it has become a commodity grown in a rigged economic system.
A system that reallocates the cost of negative impacts of production
from the cash register to our tax dollars.
And the industrial complex that churns out this food is big and
it's made it so easy for us to prioritize cheap and
unhealthy food instead of demanding healthy and sustainable food.
In fact, the cards are so highly stacked against resilient farming systems,
that I fear that they will never break through to become mainstream.
Unless we change our buying behaviours.
And I hear you thinking this is great Judy, but
I'm one consumer against an entire system.
Isn't that what legislation's for?
What can I possibly do?
I hear you but I disagree.
Because it turns out you can do a lot.
I have two suggestions.
First, recognize the cost of industrially produced food.
A pound of conventional chicken costs about $1.50 at the grocery store.
A pound of premium chicken costs closer to $2.70, much more expensive.
But as consumers, we don't pay the full price of that conventional chicken,
because it's hidden in our tax bill.
I've spent years thinking about this problem.
And after wrestling with data from the UN Environment Program,
the Sustainable Food Trust, the Food Tank,
you name it, I've come to realize that when you add the cost of negative impact,
so this could be the cost of runoff cleanup at factory farms,
incremental health care costs associated with antibiotic resistance in the country.
That pound of conventional chicken gets closer to $2.60,
not that far off from premium chicken.
In fact, on average when you add these negative externalities, that's a 2X
multiplier on the sticker price of any conventionally produced food product.
We're all familiar with MPV,
I like to think of this as the future value of our present choices.
And yes you don't pay these hidden costs today.
>> [COUGH] >> But imagine a future where you can't
get cardiac surgery because you have bacteria that is resistant to
all the antibiotics in the market.
Or a future where your child is suffering from chronic asthma
because of environmental pollution and imagine knowing then
that your food choices in the past had something to do with it.
So think about the next time you reach for
that industrial chicken off the grocery shelf.
Well, maybe now you're thinking that the price value that you placed so
much emphasis on isn't quite right.
So identify your other food values and
consider adding maybe just one more to your hierarchy.
I like to think of this as value training wheels.
>> [LAUGH] >> This could mean different things for
each of us.
If you tend to buy prepackaged meals, identify a store that you can trust to
curate a collection of these meals that will embody your food values for you.
I know I rarely look at product labels when I shop at Trader Joe's or
Whole Foods, because I know they've done some of the thinking for me.
But I also love to cook.
My roommate told me last week that I tend to cook for at least for
ten people every week, even at the GSB.
Some of you are sitting here.
Thank you for coming.
When I shop for groceries, I tend to prioritize health items.
So I decided to add my value training wheels and went local last week.
My grocery bill went up by $12.
That is the price of three cappuccino's at Cupa.
80% of you said that you would be willing to add that one value to your hierarchy.
So why don't you go and try it for a week?
If you buy based on price now, try to go local.
If you already buy local, try to go antibiotic-free.
See how little your bill changes.
Because the true drivers of change in the food system
are those of us sitting at the dining table.
And when we as consumers buy products that are aligned with sustainable food values,
we create a demand that food companies will respond to, and
farmers will respond to the buying power of these food companies.
Everybody wins.
Just think about the replacement of styrofoam cups with paper cups,
the abolition of DDT in the United States.
Or even the more reason of massive expansion of Uber into several cities
despite crippling political pressure.
All of these changes started with one voice,
the powerful voice of a consumer, your voice.
So, whether or not we acknowledge it, we have the power to vote with our wallets,
so we might as well do it intentionally.
And yes, these food choices are a conscious investment in an alternative and
resilient farming system, but they're also an investment in a better future for you.
A future where access to healthy, fresh and delicious food is a fundamental right
for everybody, and not just for those of us who can afford to pay the premium.
And because, at the heart of it all, we are what we eat, and
what I am is a life-long foodie.
And maybe you are too, because you love food just like me.
But as you leave this talk, I want to implore you to become a farmie as well,
so that you can change the system more than the system has changed you.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]