[MUSIC PLAYING] This presentation
is brought to you by Arizona State University's
Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
and a generous investment by Julie Ann Wrigley. Wrigley Lecture Series. World renowned thinkers
and problem solvers engage the community
in dialogues to address sustainability
challenges. [MUSIC PLAYING] JOAN MCGREGOR: Let
me just tell you a little bit about the
Wrigley Lecture Series. Julie Ann Wrigley has generously
supported this series. We try to bring in thought
leaders, people who are really making a difference and changing
our ways of thinking and doing things around questions
of sustainability and really trying to solve
problems in the world. So we've had a number
of speakers here. And today, we're going
to hear another one. So what you should know
about the Wrigley speakers is they're chosen by a select
committee of sustainability scientists, graduate students,
undergraduates, and Wrigley Institute staff members. And we ask these
visitors to come and not only give this
lecture to all you but also engage with the
community and students and faculty as well. So we really try to get them
here and have them interact in a lot of different venues. And of course, Alice
Waters has been very gracious in doing that
over the last two days. The other thing I would like
to do is make a few other thank you's. As we will hear
from in a minute, we have a new
sustainable food system center, the ASU Swette Center
for sustainable food systems. They supported this. The PREP Program, which is a
collaboration from the office of entrepreneurship, innovation,
and the College of Nursing and Health innovation, which
helps food business incubators, designed ventures
owned by women and underrepresented minorities. So that program has
supported this event. And also, my own
school, the school of historical philosophical
and religious studies. And I also wanted to thank
some of the groups here-- Slow Food Phoenix, Good Food
Finder, Blue Watermelon, and all the other groups. I'm not mentioning
them all that came but also all the people
in the community that really support changing and
making our food system better. So I'd like to introduce to
the podium Kathleen Merrigan. Kathleen Merrigan is the
first executive director of the Swette Center for
Sustainable Food Systems. She also holds the position
of the Kelly and Brian Swette professor of practice in
sustainable food systems with appointments in the
School of Sustainability, the College of Health
Solutions, and the College of public programs. Most recently, Dr.
Merrigan served as the executive director
for sustainability at George Washington University. But she's also had
decades of experience working in agriculture,
sustainability, and food systems. She is the former US Deputy
Secretary of Agriculture and a leader in
sustainable food systems. She managed USDA's
Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. She helped write the organic
food production acts in 1990. She was named one of Time's
100 most influential people in the world in 2010. So you can see she's a
pretty accomplished person. So let's welcome
Kathleen Merrigan. [APPLAUSE] KATHLEEN MERRIGAN: So,
so great to be here. I recently found a lovely little
paragraph that I treasure. And I wanted to share it
with all of you here today. It is found in the foreword
for a 2013 Random House book by Jane Nolan entitled From
the Ground Up-- a Food Grower's Education in Life,
Love, and the Movement That's Changing the Nation. That foreword was
written by Alice Waters. And this is the paragraph
that I found so delightful. Alice wrote, "my own life's
path has been rooted in gardens. My mother tended
a victory garden. And one fourth of July
for a costume contest, she actually dressed me up
as the queen of the garden. I was only three
or four years old. But I vividly
remember my outfit-- a skirt made from
big lacy stalks of asparagus gone to seed, a
lettuce-leaf top, bracelets and necklaces made out
of peppers and radishes, and a wreath of
strawberries on my head." So clearly, from the
very start, Alice was destined for
garden greatness. Yesterday as I stood beside
Alice at the Echo Canyon Elementary School in the garden
where the kids were so excited and lined up to have
Alice sign their backpacks and later in the evening
as she took the time to hug and thank every one of the many
chefs who prepared our dinner, I reflected on how
much impact Alice has had on American cuisine
and, of course, school food. As I withered in the
heat in the schoolyard, I couldn't help but
admire how strong Alice is, how determined, how
she engaged on a personal level with almost everyone she met. Alice does not want
to waste a minute as she continues on her quest
to change hearts, minds, and palates. What a remarkable woman. So now, my job is to
introduce this great visionary knowing full well that
this is a woman who needs no introduction. But such is the task before me. So here goes. As you likely know, Alice
Waters is a chef, author, food activist, and
the founder and owner of Chez Panisse, a restaurant
in Berkeley, California. In 1995, she founded the
edible schoolyard project, which advocates for free
school lunches for all children and a sustainable food
curriculum in every school. She's been vice
president for Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create
the Yale sustainable food project in 2003 and the
Rome sustainable food project at the American
Academy in Rome in 2007. Now, a few of her many honors. She was elected as a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, Harvard
Medical School's Global Environmental Citizen
Award in 2008, inducted into the French
Legion of Honor in 2010. I've gotta remember to ask
her about that over cocktails. And undoubtedly my
favorite, in 2015, she was awarded the
National Humanities Medal by President Obama proving
that eating is a political act and that the table is a
powerful means to social justice and positive change. Alice, in her spare time, has
authored 16 books including her critically acclaimed memoir,
Coming to My Senses-- the Making of a Counter
Culture Cook; New York Times best sellers,
The Art of Simple Food, 1 and 2; and The Edible Schoolyard. And I understand there are
more books on the way-- wow. Alice has been a champion of
local, sustainable agriculture for over four decades. It is a great honor to have her
at Arizona State University. Please join me in giving
her a warm Tempe welcome. Alice. [APPLAUSE] ALICE WATERS: I was very
touched by your introduction. Thank you. Thank you so much
for inviting me here. I have never been
to this university before although
I have eaten here in Phoenix before, a
wonderful pizzeria. And I have friends. But I'm very pleased to
come onto this campus. I'm really excited to
give this talk to you. And I love the fact that there
is a sustainability department. It's so rare. It's so needed at
every university, every college on the planet. And the enthusiasm from
the students that I met makes me know that this
is the right thing to do. Well, I've been giving this
talk in various forms for quite some time. And I'm ultimately
writing a book about it. So let me begin. We all know that there are grave
issues facing the world today-- violence, addiction,
environmental degradation, political and economic
inequalities, land use poverty, childhood hunger,
the overarching fear of climate change. But all these very serious
issues, in my opinion, are really the
outgrowth of one deeper, more fundamental condition. They're all the
byproducts of something more insidious, something
more deep rooted, so destructively
elemental and pervasive. It provides the
soil, if you will, for all of the other
issues to grow out of. And unless we deal with this
deeper, darker systemic issue, I think all the other issues
won't ever really go away. They might get a little better. But they're always going to be
there in some form or another. By not addressing the
extensive underlying condition, I fear that we're trying to
cure the symptoms of a disease without dealing with the root
causes of the disease itself. So what is this
deeper condition? What is this? The well-known author and
activist, Eric Schlosser, has pointed out that,
in the United States, we live in fast food nation. Sad to say, fast food
is the predominant way that people feed
themselves in this country. Surprisingly, most
people don't know this or don't want to know. I mean-- I mean,
it's incredible. It's incredible that Eric
wrote that book 20 years ago. And most Americans are still
addicted to fast food today. For example, in the United
States, 20% of all meals are eaten in cars. And 85% of our children don't
have one meal sitting down with their family. Just imagine, 85%. And people still think fast food
is more affordable than cooking at home. But the thing that
people really don't see-- and it's something
that I've really just come to see in
the last decade or so-- is that fast food
isn't only about food. It's bigger than that. It's way bigger. It's about culture. And culture is the knowledge,
experience, beliefs, behaviors, myths, and customs of a society. It's the invisible moral
structure underneath everything that's guiding us
all subconsciously and therefore affecting
everything that we do. Culture defines
our points of view. It dictates the way that we look
at the world, how we operate in it, how we relate to
our environment, how we see ourselves, how we express
ourselves, how we feel, how we do business, the
ways that we set up our homes, the architecture,
our schools, our entertainment, our journalism, how we treat
each other, the clothes we wear, our politics,
and on and on. Fast food culture has
become, as far as I can see, the dominant culture
of the United States. And as I said, I fear that it's
becoming the dominant culture of the world. This is the deep
insidious condition that I'm talking about,
fast food culture. And this is happening
because fast food culture, like all cultures, has
its own set of values, what I call fast food values. So if you're eating in
a fast food restaurant or in a fast food
manner, not only are you malnutrition yourself. You're also
unwittingly digesting the values of this culture. Those values become part
of you just like the food. And once those values become
part of you, they change you. Begin to have a
different outlook on things, different cravings,
different moral standards and expectations. Now, your desires and
hungers are being programmed by a fast food culture. And because of that, you start
to create a dehumanized world for yourself without
even knowing it, a world with fast food
values inherent in it, a world where fast food values
seem actually appropriate. Uniformity. An example of a fast
food value is uniformity. The idea that everything should
be the same wherever you go. The hot dogs that
you get in New York should be exactly like
the one you get in LA. And that Starbucks macchiato
you can seemingly get anywhere these days should
be exactly like, well, the one you get
here in Scottsdale. And if it's not, there may
be something wrong with it. We take uniformity for granted. We actually like it a lot. It helps us feel familiar
in unfamiliar places. Well, it's just like the
hamburger I have at home. That taco looks and tastes the
same as it does in Mexico City. Uniformity comforts us. It helps us feel safe. Or we think it does. Because uniformity, like
all fast food values, hides a deeper, darker side. In terms of what
you eat, it limits what you think is good for you. With uniformity, you don't
even want to try anything new, especially if it
looks different. Suddenly, there's something
suspicious about it, something to be rejected, something
even to be afraid of. Eventually, you want
everything-- not just your food, but everything to
look the same, be the same. You look for the same kind
of TV shows wherever you go. You design the same kind
of buildings in every town. You start wanting the
same kind of clothes that everybody else has. And you search out hotels
that are familiar wherever you go that are recognizable,
restaurant chains, and brand outlet stores. Uniformity as a value fosters
the loss of individuality, the pressure to conform, the
disrespect for uniqueness, even prejudice and control. All eggs should look the same. All houses should be the same. Everyone should behave the same
way, or you should report them. Speed. Speed is my favorite one. Things should
happen really fast. The faster, the better. You order, you should get it. You want it, you
should have it-- right then, no waiting. The faster things are
done, the better-- in and out. As many of you probably
know, Amazon now delivers groceries
to your door as fast as they can get them to you. There are even companies
who refund your money if they can't get your
food to you fast enough. It's amazing. It's amazing really. And when we live
like this, I feel like not only do our
expectations become warped. But we become
easily distractible. We lose the sense that
the best things take time like growing food or cooking
or learning a language or growing a business or
getting to know someone for that matter. These days, if there's
not instant gratification, we get frustrated. There's no maturity, no
reflection, no patience. The faster it's
delivered, the faster it's communicated, the more time. Time is money-- very important. Time is money. How many cows can you slaughter
in the slaughterhouse in a day? How many patients can you see
in a doctor's office in a day? How quickly can you
down your lunch? How fast can you download
your messages on your phone? Ah! Availability. That's another one. The idea that we should
be able to get whatever we want wherever we are, 24/7. You should be able to
get a peach in Tucson in the middle of winter-- or maybe you can
get that, can you? You should be able to get
Evian water in Nairobi or a pineapple in
Tierra del Fuego. The twisted idea of
availability to me not only spoils
people but causes them to lose track
of time and space. With this constant availability,
seasons stop mattering. Why wait for the
late summer apples that are grown
right down the road when you can get cryovaced ones
at the discount store all year long? Suddenly, what's indigenous
to certain places becomes unclear and
even irrelevant. Local culture and the
specialness of what's happening here and
now becomes less important than that big
homogenized fast food "get anything you want"
global reality-- or in my view, unreality. Cheapness. Ah, yes, cheapness. This is one that's omnipresent
in the United States. There is a complete mixing up
of affordability with cheapness. There's a deep feeling that
value equates bargains. Buy two, get one for free. Four hamburgers for $1. Food for less. One of the first things
you know that Jeff Bezos, the president
of Amazon, did when he bought Whole Foods was-- of course, you know that
semi-sustainable grocery chain. The first thing he did
was to drop prices. Yes, I think it
benefited some people. But what about the people
who were growing the food and bringing it to the market? Fast food culture makes you
conveniently forget about them and also about the
environmental costs of farming on a massive scale
and the amount of carbon needed for the transportation
and the refrigeration. With cheapness, no one
understands the real cost of anything anymore-- 1, because no one
ever tells them, and 2, everything is
priced artificially supported by subsidies
and corporate sleight of hand and credit. When cheapness has
such a high value, no one talks about the
quality of things anymore or how bad or good they
might be for the planet. It's just what a
good deal it is. What a good deal. And the truth is-- and it's something that
we all need to learn-- food can be affordable. But it can never be cheap. When I hear someone say, I
just got it cheaper here, I just feel intuitively
that somebody somewhere is being sold out. You cannot not pay for something
here and somebody over there not getting what
he or she deserves. And it's usually the
farmer or the farm worker. You cannot not pay and
not expect other problems in your life over there such
as those we're having now with the environment and climate. More is better. More is better. The more you pile on your
plate, the happier you'll be. The more cans on the shelf in
the big box discount store, the better. The bigger the buffet,
the more awesome. Basically, the more you have and
the more choices that you have, the better. And I find this fast
food value so strange. Because to me, when
I get too much stuff and I have too many choices,
I just get overwhelmed. And I feel burdened by it. There's no room for discernment. There's just weight and volume. And with that volume
comes so much waste. Our garbage cans
and landfills keep getting more and more filled
with boxes and bubble wrap from things shipped from
halfway around the world. There are self-storage
units that I've seen in New York City that
are popping up everywhere. And it's a place where you
could put all that stuff so that you can buy more. There's a place right there
on the East River in New York City, a whole block that
used to be apartment buildings that they have been
turned into storage units. I mean, it's just crazy. And then there's terminology. Fast food culture also
co-ops the meanings of words in order to make profit, what
I call a terminology problem. I mean, what does
organic mean these days? What does natural
mean for that matter? Local. Fair trade. Fresh. How could you call
something fresh when it's maybe
a week or two old and shipped from
thousands of miles away? The definitions of these
terms have been hijacked. And they seem to
fluctuate and have more to do with marketing
and presentations than any attempt to
clarify and inform. And what's scarier is how
fast these terms are hijacked. When the food movement
finds a new term that works for us like sustainable,
it gets absorbed immediately by the fast food culture. And it's used everywhere
indiscriminately. And in no time, the term
is misleading and cloudy and sometimes just
completely meaningless. Take the term pesticide
free or government approved. How about pasture raised? There are so many slippery
terms that I'm aware of. And I think you can
probably think of many. And then there are standards. Behind the use of terminology
is the issue of standards. What standards are
we really using? And where do they come from? There seem to be standards. But they don't mean anything. And they shift from
one country to another. What's organic for
a farmer in China, for example, may not be
at all what's organic for a farmer in California. And so it confuses
everybody, defeating the purpose of standards
in the first place. Even worse, some
standards reduce standards as in the case of
food companies who lobbied to get fabricated
compounds like corn syrup considered natural
ingredients in their products. Another standard that's
just baffling to me is this idea of carbon credits. If you pay for them, you
get kind of a free pass in a sense to pollute
in other countries. What kind of
standards are those? They feel like
entitlement standards. I mean, do carbon credits
really help save the rainforest? I was just down in Sao Paulo
for a big discussion about this. And I'm not sure they do. In many cases,
standards are kind of a deception, kind of a
lie, another fast food value-- dishonesty. Perhaps the biggest
value of all. Actually, I used to think that
dishonesty was the biggest of the fast food values. And now, I've come to
understand that it's greed. Greed is the value that
is causing the most destruction in our world. The impulse to honor profit
and financial accumulation over human value and
environmental protection. I should not be shocked, but I
am, by the persistent collusion between corporations
and governments and those responsible for
nurturing our precious food supply and natural resources. So yes, there is a
fast food culture. And yes, it's permeating
every aspect of our lives. And yes, it's literally
changing the world. But fortunately, there
is a counterforce. There's an antidote. And I call this antidote-- no surprise-- slow food culture. And fortunately,
slow food culture has its own set of values-- slow food values. Slow food values are
earthbound agrarian values that have been cultivated since
the beginning of civilization through customs and practices. And we all know them. We all know them-- taking care of the
land, eating seasonally, celebrating the harvest,
sharing our work and our bounty, gathering together at the
table with family and friends. These are non-regressive,
backward-looking values. They are not. They are grounded in
traditional methods. And yes, they are
evolving with us. And they're moving forward. And they're guiding us
if we pay attention. Sustainability is one. You know all of these. Sustainability,
seasonality-- you can flip these
very quickly, Andy, because I know you know them. Diversity, economy. Interconnectedness,
this is a beautiful one. These pictures were all taken
at the edible schoolyard project at Berkeley. Interdependence, responsibility,
collaboration, authenticity, and generosity. So how do we awaken
values like this? How do we champion slow food
values in a fast food world? How do we rediscover them and
cultivate them and make sure that they take
root and flourish? In other words, how do
we educate and show them how to nurture slow food values? How do we nurture them
in our everyday life? Well, I feel very
deep in my heart that schools are the
best place to do this. And I love that Gloria
Steinem said way back when that "public education
is our last truly democratic institution." Almost everybody goes
to school or should. Schools have the
best places where we can introduce and teach a
new way of living and caring for the environment to
the next generation. They're a common
place in our culture where we can reach every
student equally and rapidly when they're young and
learning before they have been indoctrinated
into a fast food culture. And I wish I had
a picture that I took in Spain of
a woman that was pushing a stroller of a
little two-year-old in there. And there was a
bottle of coca-cola as big as the child sitting
in the stroller at the front. And we're not understanding how
deeply that impression, that branding is going on. And even Marion
Nestle has a picture in her presentation showing how
baby bottles have been branded with Coke labels so that it's
happening practically at birth. But right now, schools are
not places of equality. And maybe this is truly
globally happening. It's assembly-lined all the way. They become industrialized
like our farms. The buildings are laid out
like factories, even some like prisons with barbed wire
and security checkpoints. Students are treated
like products rather than individuals sort of
one size fits all. Pupils report to teachers
who report to principals who report to superintendents
who report to higher ups just like in a corporation. And just like in a
corporation, the teachers are paid less than those higher
up in the management positions. And the school
systems are literally funded by groups or companies
that make fast food products. Every single moment of
our children's life, they're confronted with
fast food culture-- on TV, on their
phones, in their music, in their clothes with
corporate branding of all their favorite
sports teams and events that are happening in
the schools, the branding in their textbooks, the
advertising inside the school hallways. It's really inescapable. And the school cafeterias
have become the venues, as you know, for
fast food culture, more like food courts with
prepackaged foods in vending machines and flashy corporate
marketing emblazoned on the walls. Advertising confers value
in a fast food culture. What's being valued
in a place like this? What's being taught? What's being passed on? Well, for the last
25 years, I've been working on and
building an alternative-- an edible education
curriculum for all schools. It's a curriculum that
uses an interactive kitchen and garden as classrooms
to teach slow food values to the students in
their academic subjects. We have now a network of 6,500
schools around the world. And it's a network
that we've only been working on for a
little over five years. And people enter their own
projects into the system. And they are mapped. And then all of
the information can be shared, downloaded for free. It's just all there. And these are schools that
believe in sustainability. They understand
that all children should be eating a free,
sustainable school lunch. And they all believe that
they can teach much more easily if they have a garden
classroom or a kitchen classroom because there
isn't a child who would not like to be outside or cooking
something in a kitchen while they're doing and
learning the history of a particular country. So it's what we've
really been doing at Chez Panisse for a
very long period of time. We've been buying directly
food from the farmers and taking all of the
scraps from the restaurant and bringing them
back to the farm. And we've cut out the
middleman, the distributors. And we give all of the money
directly to the people who are taking care of
the land and where they can be appropriately
compensated for the hard work they do. They're not having to sell
anymore at wholesale price to a grocery store. They're selling it to
us at the real price. And this is what can really,
really benefit the farmer. When schools, and
even universities, change the way that they
buy and source food, it sends a message
into the world that it's possible to rely
on local sustainable farmers everywhere. I call this school-supported
agriculture. I think we need that
one slide up here. Nope, not that one. Do we have the pledge? Oh, I hope. The pledge has disappeared. No, it's before that. No. It's lost, the pledge. I'm so sad. It's in my purse. But I'll pass them
out to you later. But what we've done in
the state of California, because we have an
enlightened governor and many political
people in Congress and a very needy
population of students, we're number 47th in academic
achievement in the United States. And it's so shocking considering
the wealth of the state. But we have put together--
and Barbara Boxer was then Senator and helped
me to put this together. And it's called Our
Pledge to Public Education for Children and Farmers. To provide a free sustainable
school lunch for all students K through 12. Number 2-- to buy food directly
from farmers and ranchers who take care of the land
and their workers. And third-- to
teach all students the values of nourishment,
stewardship, and community. And so this is how we
envision making change in the state of California. And already, you may know
that there is a free school lunch in the city of New York. You may know that already. And we're really trying to
help them to make it nourishing and to support the
sustainable farmers that live in and around New York City. So that's the plan. And so we need your help. And I think when this
begins to happen, the values of the
farmers will come right through the cafeteria door. And I call this a
delicious revolution. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] This presentation
is brought to you by Arizona State University's
Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability for
educational and noncommercial use only.
