I’m most inspired by a group of people – and that’s farmers. Family farmers. Small sustainable family farmers to be exact. I was fortunate enough to go to a dinner in Iowa a couple months ago and there were hundreds of farmers. It was a Diamond Ranch dinner. These farmers I met work so hard […]
I’m inspired by people like Paul Willis who are on a grassroots level, coordinating local farmers to work together to create and perhaps even rejuvenate and revitalize a way of farming that was actually the norm about 40, 50 years ago. So a man like that who’s willing to get his fingers dirty, his hands […]
I’m going to cheat a little bit here – I’m inspired by chefs. As the Board Chair of Chefs Collaborative and a lifelong chef, I am someone who communicates with the world through my hands, and I think it’s an amazing thing to do every day. Chefs are by nature sort of selfless and generous […]
One of the people that I really enjoy going to and listening to talk and watching the things that they’re doing at the moment is Walter Rob, who is the president of Whole Foods. He speaks so much about the changing food system but more importantly the relationship of how you find purpose in the […]
I’m inspired by this whole network of people who are really paying attention to this. And you find that there are many branches to this particular issue – it’s the chefs, asking those questions, looking for good products; there are the consumers themselves, there are people that are interested in the environment, the diversity, the […]
I’m really inspired by Andrew Gunther, and what Andrew Gunther is doing with Animal Welfare Approved, and the fight that he’s fighting. And what an uphill battle it is to shift the factory farms in this country. But he keeps at it and I think there is going to be measured success with it.
Right now, coming off of a conference, I’m really inspired by Mark Bittman. His refocusing of the conversation around food that starts with poverty is really inspiring because we’re not going to solve the problems of food until we get to the root of the problem in food. And to me, the truth is always […]