Address at the Food Forever Experience Pocono

Cierra Martin

On 25 September 2020, at Pocono Organics in Long Pond, PA, the Food Forever Initiative used the “Global Day of Action” for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as an opportunity to invite chefs, media, farmers, influencers, and consumers to an immersive digital experience designed to raise awareness of the importance of crop diversity and its connection to healthy soils and resilient, sustainable agricultural systems.

Food Forever partnered with world-renowned chefs, regional change-makers, business leaders and scientists for a digital solutions symposium: Racing to Safeguard Biodiversity, dedicated to driving positive change in our food system. The talks featured food influencers such as Chef Dan Barber (Blue Hill), Birgit Cameron (Patagonia Provisions), Cary Fowler (Former Executive Director, Crop Trust) and others to dive deeper into the challenges and opportunities that food systems are facing when it comes to safeguarding and harnessing the power of agrobiodiversity. Specifically, what is required to sustainably source new nutritious and climate-resilient ingredients and increase availability in local, regional and global value chains.

I was fortunate to give the closing address at this event - our final (and eleventh) Food Forever Experience in a two year- eight country awareness-raising journey. Watch below or scroll for the full transcript.

Transcript

Hello everyone, my name is Cierra Martin and I’m with the Crop Trust and Food Forever Communications team.

I find it really difficult to speak after the incredible leaders that you just heard before me. They were truly inspiring and I feel very honored to be included in this lineup at all.

The speakers you heard from today, don’t just talk the talk but they are walking the walk, and I’m so glad that they were able to share just a small portion of the incredible work they are doing with you this morning.

None of the program that you just experienced would be possible without the dedication and support of the team at Pocono Organics, so I want to start by saying a big big big thank you to the Pocono Organics team, Patagonia Provisions for supporting the creation of the event, as well as the Rodale Institute and the Cohere team and our amazing team of dedicated staff at the Crop Trust who have worked tirelessly to realize this. And not least to our speakers who have taken the time out of there busy schedules to be with you here today and to our rockstar emcee, Dina who you all know well by now. But I think it’s worth repeating again a big big thank you to Ashley Walsh and her team for making this a reality.

I met Ashley on this very same day two years ago in New York City at our first Food Forever Experience. I remember having this moment right before guests arrived where I was terrified. This idea of an experience and a way to make crop diversity more tangible to people through communication and chefs and ultimately the plate of food was just an idea at that point. We had never done something like this before so we were really unsure if we would reach people or not. What we did know was that not many people knew about the United Nations Sustainable Development goals or that goal 2 was to end hunger by 2030. And we were pretty positive that even if people knew about that, even fewer people knew about Target 2.5 under goal 2 which calls on the global community to safeguard crop and livestock diversity as one stepping stone to ending hunger and reaching the larger goal by 2030.

I think we can all agree that ending hunger is a good thing. Making our foods more nutritious and more resilient in the face of climate change is not something to be overlooked. And I think we all understand the gravity and importance of this. But how many people actually understand what that means and how the loss of agrobiodiversity affects what we eat daily. As Simran Sethi put it in her book Bread Wine and Chocolate the Slow loss of foods we love, people are busy and there’s a lot competing for our attention. We’re more attentive to those things that have a direct influence on our daily life. So if we can make this story individual, it’s more likely to resonate and stick.

The idea of the Food Forever Experience was to do just that. We said, let’s stop talking about the diversity of foods but show people (through fun communications tools like these painted mannequins you see beside me which show on the left what our normal diets look like and what they could look like if we started brining more diversity into our diets). We said let them taste it though the amazing craft of chefs who rely on the diversity of our foods for their work.

Since September 25th 2018, We’ve had 10 experiences in 8 countries, we’ve heard directly from indigenous communities like the Parque de la Papa in Peru safeguarding over 4000 different varieties of potato, to the world Economic forum in Davos to London during the holiday season where we highlighted our personal and cultural connections to food to our last experience in Abu Dhabi where we heard directly from youth who were exploring paths to improve our food systems. We’ve reached thousands of people from top chefs to teachers to entrepreneurs to the president of Peru. But what has been one of the biggest successes of this entire campaign in my personal opinion is that we’re here right now and I’m speaking with you all at this very moment at the Food Forever Experience Pocono.

I don’t know if we reached everybody in the room at the Food Forever Experience NYC but I can tell you with confidence that we reached one person, Ashley Walsh, Who was inspired enough to build a Food Forever garden, to reach out to genebanks and the USDA and Seed Savers Exchange and Row 7 and start working with this diversity, growing it, experimenting, cooking with new varieties and ultimately bringing this message to all of you today through hosting this event. That one connection made a difference.

As a communicator, I’ve had some existential conversations about the value of communications. I struggled because I didn’t want to just write blogs that would never amount to any real impact. I wanted to be out there. Doing “real” work not just talking about it. I wanted to make a difference, but through this event, I’ve really seen that awareness raising can lead in some cases, not all, to concrete positive action which makes tangible impact.

And that’s what I’d like to leave you all with today. At Food Forever, we’ve been pretty good about raising awareness, but awareness means nothing if it doesn’t influence and change our behavior. For Ashley, it did and I encourage everyone still listening to internalize what you’ve heard today. Reach out to the speakers and their organizations. Get involved in whatever little piece of this work spoke the most to you. Because every single day that we don’t act, we’re losing valuable resources that underpin our entire food systems.

I recently learned of the Mayan definition of the human being, which they called “vibrant being.” The thinking being that we are all part of the same universal vibration. There is a poem by playwright Luis Valdez in Lak’ech that says you are my other me. Part of it reads, if I do harm to you, I do harm to myself, If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.

This really resonated with me and is meaningful not only in our relationships to one another but with our environment, our food systems and the decisions we take every day in what to grow, what to eat, and where we choose to direct our support.

We can’t do this alone and our actions are connected.

At the very beginning of our day today, Ashley said “We is greater than me - and we can change the world together.”

Let’s go do it. Thank you so much for your time and attention and have a great rest of your afternoon. Be well.