For Susan Edwards, a University of Vermont Extension nutritionist and farmer’s wife, good food is local and seasonal. For about four weeks in the spring, she eats asparagus, then enjoys strawberries as long as they are available nearby, she told about 30 fellow attendees at the University of Vermont Food Systems Summit last week.
Sitting on another side of the rectangular table during the same seminar, entitled “Let Food Be Thy Medicine,” Amanda Barnes said the customers of the grocery chain where she works as a nutritionist in Washington, D.C., buy strawberries all year round and found mangos on sale last week in the produce bins.
“A lot of people don’t know what’s in season anymore,” Barnes said. “When you say ‘eat seasonally’ to most people, they don’t even know what that means.”
Such dichotomy highlights the disconnect between the health benefits of fresh food and the consumer marketplace, said Lisa Masé, who led the seminar. This exchange was one of dozens of lively discussions and complicated challenges raised by the Food Systems Summit, an annual gathering of about 300 academics, activists, government agents and industry leaders trying to solve a smorgasbord of food-related social problems. Held June 14 and 15 at UVM’s Davis Center, the summit has grown into an essential event for those rooted in the study of cultivating, producing, transporting, distributing, regulating, promoting, protecting and consuming food.
“No matter how much you think you know, you’re always going to learn more,” said Dawn King, a lecturer and faculty fellow in environment and society at Brown University in Rhode Island, who returned to the UVM summit after attending in a previous year.
King said she appreciates the range of viewpoints – philosophically and geographically – that the event brings. “Someone from California is going to have a different perspective than someone from New England.”
This year, the summit focused on the question: “What Makes Food Good?” The designation of goodness, however, is debatable and controversial, according to the keynote speakers.
During her presentation kicking off the conference, Charlotte Biltekoff flashed on the overhead screen an image of a glass of deep-green juice and asked what makes it good. Many would point to the science and data: nutritional value, level of toxicology or sustainable sourcing of the ingredients, said Biltekoff, associate professor of American Studies and Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis.
Historically, though, the social and political norms of the time have dictated dietary advice and influenced consumer food choice even more than the science, she continued. During World War II, for example, factory workers who failed to eat an ample lunch were equated with “helping Hitler,” according to a workplace poster that Biltekoff showed.
“Science can’t answer these questions, because they are political questions in their nature,” Biltekoff told the audience. Another example she pointed out: the current backlash against – and some state regulation of – sugary beverages. “We need real dialogue about these debates.”
During his keynote speech, M. Jahi Chappell examined the problem of food insecurity, arguing that the world food supply is more than adequate to sustain the population. Chappell, incoming senior research fellow at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University in the United Kingdom, suggested that the drive to increase production and keep food prices low is hurting, not helping, those who suffer from hunger.
It’s not a matter of making more food, he explained, but putting energy and investment toward removing the obstacles that prevent access to good, healthy food. Those include poor sanitation, poverty, gender inequality in socioeconomic status, lack of transportation and food waste. Higher food prices would trickle down to producers and their laborers and, ultimately, lead to some social improvements, Chappell said.
“You need to look at how we need to evolve and maybe have a revolution in our food systems.”
Summit participants also chewed on the highly charged subject of genetically modified food, addressed by keynote speaker Rachel Ankeny, professor of history and leader of the Food Values Research Group at the University of Adelaide in Australia. She raised multiple sides of the arguments both for and against GMs.
“It points to the wide range of factors and considerations and values that people bring to the table when they start to think about food choices,” Ankeny said.
Like her fellow keynoters, Ankeny’s insights defied any preconceived tendencies to view certain foods as “good” and others as “bad” in developing food policy. “The question of what makes good food is a fantastic frame off of which to hang that dialogue,” she said.
Dialogue permeated the conference – between sessions, in the hallways and during lunch breaks – as participants shared experiences and advice. After each keynote speaker, they were encouraged to stay at their tables for several minutes to talk about the themes.
“Take advantage of those conversations. Leave inspired,” said Doug Lantagne, dean and director of UVM Extension and its Food Systems Initiative, during his opening remarks for the summit. “We know this is a time for valuable exchanges.”
That’s precisely why Stephanie Monserrate, a small farmer in Puerto Rico, wanted to come to the summit. She hopes to create a collective to support other start-up producers on the U.S. island.
“I love how Vermont has grown its food industry, and I want to bring that back to Puerto Rico,” she said. “Every time I come here, not just hearing speakers but other people’s experiences, that helps me. I love the networking. That’s one of the most important things.”
The annual summit began in 2012 as one of the key components of UVM’s Food Systems Initiative, which launched two years earlier to fuse multiple academic disciplines – agriculture, nutrition, environmental studies, plant biology, food sciences, public health and others – focused on research and education to strengthen and support regional food systems. The initiative started with a master’s program and expands this fall to offer an undergraduate degree and welcome doctoral students.
UVM is still refining its program, which few other institutions offer. “It’s cutting edge across the country,” said Lilly Fink Shapiro, project coordinator of the Sustainable Food Systems Initiative at the University of Michigan, who collaborated over lunch with colleagues from UVM and Washington State University. “It’s connecting with a lot of these people that is really the most valuable for me.”
Lunch was cutting-edge, too, with locally grown produce, meats and tofu and an emphasis on healthy options: brown rice and red quinoa pilaf, sautéed turnip and beet greens with pickled mushrooms, and strawberry-rhubarb compote on lemon-thyme biscuits with Vermont whipped cream.
This year, the summit format switched to concurrent breakout sessions, rather than a series of single speakers. The array of topics – including food waste; the ethics of hunting; and farmworkers spearheading social responsibility – were chosen by the attendees themselves, who voted online for those that interested them most before the summit began.
“University of Vermont has a great reputation as far as learning and action when it comes to food systems,” said Jess Gerroir, a doctoral fellow and sustainability educator at Antioch University New England in Keene, N.H., who helped lead a session on community gardens. “So I knew there would be a great interaction of minds, heads and hearts here.”
