Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg (by Food Tank)
Sep 22, 2026 · 31 min · 6 segments
Food Tank is live all week at WNYC-NPR's The Greene Space to talk solutions for food, agriculture, and environment during Climate Week NYC. In this episode, we're sharing two conversations from our…
Jennifer Siebel NewsomGuest
Rob SamuelsGuest
Dani NierenbergHost
You know, I heard today that you just saw the Henry Ford's Farm to School Lunch Across America film, and I'd love to hear more about it.
Yes, so I'm so grateful to the Henry Ford Museum for putting this film together.
They... follow stories around Farm to School in California and Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I mean, it's everything we've been doing in California with our Farm to School initiative, married to Universal Meals, in addition to legislation that we passed to reduce or ban ultra-processed food in school meals, reducing sugar.
and the chemicals and salt in addition to also just creating the other day the governor and well actually it's not been announced yet a seal to distinguish non-ultra processed foods so that it makes shopping easier for all of us so that we can give our families whole real food.
But this is a, you know, we've taken a whole systems approach, but the documentary was just fabulous and you all have to see it.
It's short, which is wonderful for those of us with short attention spans, but it's a no-brainer and we have to have Farm to School in every school and school district across our country I mean we've through marrying Universal meals and farm to school half over half of California public school kids are getting fresh delicious locally sourced meals daily with salad bars and 80% of our grantees our title one schools and again seasonal produce we've Sorry, I'm ranting.
But it was just really fun to see a film that really mirrored our values and what we've been doing in California by investing in kitchen infrastructure and training, by funding not just transitions from organic to regenerative agriculture, but also funding the...
the middle person that's not Cisco or a big industrial processing company, but basically an ally to farmers and to schools to basically make sure that the money's staying with the farmers and that the food, again, is locally sourced, fresh, delicious, organic, regenerative, where possible.
think you know it's so important that you know the the film highlights what's happening across the United States not just in California and no offense but like things that work in California don't always work elsewhere they can and this shows that it's possible and I think that's really really exciting and especially right now I'm wondering what made you so passionate about this issue that you wanted to devote you know a lot of your time to it
So I have an environmental science background and I lived and worked in Africa and Latin America with indigenous communities in sustainable agroforestry and ironically connecting food suppliers, indigenous food suppliers in Peru and southern Africa with whole foods and at the time wild oats.
I studied environmental science for part of my, it was one of my many studies at Stanford until I realized I needed to actually have a major.
And so I kind of combined a bunch of things and created my own major.
And I'm so grateful because it's there that We learned to, we had a school garden and we spent part of the school day walking in nature with Miss Twilliger by the water in Marin County.
And we would make our own little lunch from some food from the garden, but also just whole food.
And then we sit in silence with placemats and, you know, basically essentially break bread and have these quiet, reflective meals.
You know, I heard today that you just saw the Henry Ford's Farm to School Lunch Across America film, and I'd love to hear more about it.
Yes, so I'm so grateful to the Henry Ford Museum for putting this film together.
They... follow stories around Farm to School in California and Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I mean, it's everything we've been doing in California with our Farm to School initiative, married to Universal Meals, in addition to legislation that we passed to reduce or ban ultra-processed food in school meals, reducing sugar.
and the chemicals and salt in addition to also just creating the other day the governor and well actually it's not been announced yet a seal to distinguish non-ultra processed foods so that it makes shopping easier for all of us so that we can give our families whole real food.
But this is a, you know, we've taken a whole systems approach, but the documentary was just fabulous and you all have to see it.
It's short, which is wonderful for those of us with short attention spans, but it's a no-brainer and we have to have Farm to School in every school and school district across our country I mean we've through marrying Universal meals and farm to school half over half of California public school kids are getting fresh delicious locally sourced meals daily with salad bars and 80% of our grantees our title one schools and again seasonal produce we've Sorry, I'm ranting.
But it was just really fun to see a film that really mirrored our values and what we've been doing in California by investing in kitchen infrastructure and training, by funding not just transitions from organic to regenerative agriculture, but also funding the...
the middle person that's not Cisco or a big industrial processing company, but basically an ally to farmers and to schools to basically make sure that the money's staying with the farmers and that the food, again, is locally sourced, fresh, delicious, organic, regenerative, where possible.
think you know it's so important that you know the the film highlights what's happening across the United States not just in California and no offense but like things that work in California don't always work elsewhere they can and this shows that it's possible and I think that's really really exciting and especially right now I'm wondering what made you so passionate about this issue that you wanted to devote you know a lot of your time to it
So I have an environmental science background and I lived and worked in Africa and Latin America with indigenous communities in sustainable agroforestry and ironically connecting food suppliers, indigenous food suppliers in Peru and southern Africa with whole foods and at the time wild oats.
I studied environmental science for part of my, it was one of my many studies at Stanford until I realized I needed to actually have a major.
And so I kind of combined a bunch of things and created my own major.
And I'm so grateful because it's there that We learned to, we had a school garden and we spent part of the school day walking in nature with Miss Twilliger by the water in Marin County.
And we would make our own little lunch from some food from the garden, but also just whole food.
And then we sit in silence with placemats and, you know, basically essentially break bread and have these quiet, reflective meals.
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