Change Dinner, Change the World: Ellen Gustafson at TEDxSanDiego

Ellen Gustafson co-founded FEED Projects in 2007, creating an immensely popular bag whose profits are donated to the UN World Food Program (WFP). As a former employee of the WFP, she supported their mission to provide school lunches in developing countries so that children could receive both the nutrition and education they need.

Truth: Food is awesome.

We all love to eat.

It's one of the best things
we do every single day.

Food actually can be the solution
to so many problems,

from my own personal mood
to geopolitical strife.

But the reality is — food can also
be the cause of a lot of problems,

and as an entrepreneur,
I love to solve problems.

The first one I went out
to tackle was hunger,

because it's a pretty
intractable problem.

A billion people hungry in a world
where we actually have enough food

to feed everyone more than
a 2,000 calories a day that they need,

today on the planet.

The problem is obviously that

food is not necessarily getting
to the people where they are.

Even in America, there are
49 million hungry people.

One thing I found ironic when travelling
to the world's hungry regions,

is that even in the most
desperate desolate places

where hunger is ravaging populations,

you can generally find soda,

and you can generally find
packaged processed foods,

and sometimes even French fries,

which has led to another intractable
problem in our food system,

which is a massive
global obesity epidemic.

Now, there are places in the world

where people are transitioning
from hunger to obesity

in just one generation,

and having all of the health problems

that we in our own
Western diet countries have.

Things like, diabetes,
and heart disease, and cancer,

at the same rates that we do,
in just one generation

after being hungry for years.

And it looks like this problem
is going to balloon

to about 2 billion people,
even in just 2015.

So we have on our planet,
just caused by food

two major malnutrition crisis,

and I argue that they're
essentially the same problem.

In both hunger and obesity,

it's very difficult to access
nutritious foods,

no matter where you are.

And they're killing us.

These two problems alone
are responsible

for millions and millions
of deaths every year.

And they're totally preventable, right?

Because it's all because of food.

So, I'm trying to understand

why food can be the cause
of so much death and destruction.

Or, where does food come from?

It comes from agriculture.

And we've been made to believe

that there's essentially
two forms of agriculture.

One, which we mostly get
in the United States,

represented by me on a gray bin,

where there's massive highly
consolidated farms.

And another, which you can see it
represented by these women,

which is mostly women farmers on
very under-financed plots of land

that they don't necessarily own.

80% of the farmers in Africa are women,

most of them have
no rights to their lands,

and have no resources.

So, we now see that maybe
hunger and obesity,

both connected to farms,

could be connected to this fact

that there's a bifurcated agricultural
system around the planet.

Where did this come from?

It actually came around the same time
I came onto the planet, 1980.

And, something kind of weird
happened in 1980

that led to that graph of obesity
that we all see today.

It pretty much starts with 1980.

Well, what changed?

Something changed that
fundamentally shifted dinner.

I argue that in the 70's oil crisis,

making oil and all the inputs
to agriculture wildly more expensive,

a lot of changes came out of that.

One of the biggest changes
was a massive loss

of small and medium size
farmers in America.

We lost a million farmers
right around 1980.

But other interesting things
happened in 1980.

Genetically modified crops
became patentable

according to a Supreme Court
decision in 1980.

High fructose corn syrup first came
onto the market in a big way in 1980.

We started to divest
in agriculture internationally.

So since 1980, we've shifted away
from agricultural development

and towards food aid
by measure of about 75 percent.

And we also stopped investing in
agricultural systems in our own country,

like, publicly financed
research for seeds.

Today, most of that
is done by corporations,

and you can obviously tell what kind
of results they're gonna get.

Also since 1980, the data is very clear,

both hunger and obesity are up.

Hunger has increased by 80 million people.

This is in a time when we know
exactly how to grow food,

and how to certainly feed the planet.

And this other problem
has obviously appeared.

Well, what we grow
is clearly part of the problem.

Corn is in everything.

From our soda to our beef,
to our cars, and to our food aid.

And what we eat is an absolute
outcome of what we grow.

Because we have such preponderance

of corn, soy and wheat
in our agricultural system.

And we subsidize it.

Fruits and vegetables have become
much more expensive relatively.

Also, we're growing these inputs
that go directly into fast food.

And, if we can see that data alone,

you can tell obviously
that our global food system

has changed quite dramatically.

The other weird part of the food system
that no one likes to talk about

is that both hunger and obesity
are connected to some strange middle man.

We solve hunger by canned food drives,

and that same canned food
is what has caused

a lot of our health and obesity
problems around the world.

We all know that the solution to both

is fresh fruits and vegetables,

healthy food, and easy access
to them by everyone.

I argue that in the next 30 years

we can actually erase all those
bad problems with the food system

and change the food system for the better.

We have a 30-year-call-to-action
to reverse problems that started in 1980,

and recreate a better food system
of the future.

I think it's time to change dinner.

And my argument is not
just that these problems

are intractable, and big, and global.

It's that there are things
that we can do something about

right at our own dinner table.

If we change dinner, we can change health.

187 billion dollars is our
per year investment

in just obesity related diseases
in our health system.

We can change the environment.

We've seen that our food system,
our soil can be a carbon eater,

instead of a carbon output.

We see that our water has been
degraded by our agricultural system.

All things that can be changed
right from our dinner table

if we choose better,
more agro-ecological farming.

We can change farms.
That whole middle section between

the really small farmer who is under-funded,
and the really big farmer

that is a corporate conglomerate.

That whole section is waiting for change.

Here in San Diego,
you have living in a county

with the most farms
of any county in America.

That's something you can do to change
dinner right in your own home.

We can change trade
by buying fair trade products.

We have huge opportunity to affect
change around the world

and make sure people are paid well
enough to feed their kids.

We can change meat. We're not supposed
to be eating corn-fed meat.

it's worst for the environment,
it's worst for our health.

If we buy better quality meat, we're helping
to change the food system for the better.

We can change local economies
and forget about other investment plans

that are brought by Washington
or Sacramento.

We can change local economies right here,

by keeping our money in our
food system right at home.

We can change family health:
like we've seen in some of those videos,

eating together not only brings
home the family story,

but it actually makes kids have
better grades, do better in school,

do fewer drugs later in life,
it's a huge social impact.

We can change security.

"A hungry man is an angry man,"
says an old African proverb,

and if we make sure that we're investing
in agricultural aid around the world,

we're helping to improve hunger.

We can change innovation.

There are systems,
like those farms in a box,

that we can actually improve upon
local regional agricultural systems

right in our own backyard.

And we can change value.
What's the new value meal?

Is it something that we make at home,

or is it something
that we go out and buy?

My call to action is change dinner
and change the world.

Thank you.

(Applause)