Category: Video

Why Is There Hunger In a World of Plenty?

Here in the US, we have not only very tight control of food and food surpluses by Big Food and Big Ag, we have an additional form of control: intentional degrading of food quality through hyper-processing for profit. Yes, it takes money to access good food; yet we are seeing new forms of malnutrition from overly processed and adulterated food. Raj Patel, writer, activist, and academic, discusses the role of international food markets in propagating inequities in food access and distribution.

Vandana Shiva – Seeds of Humanity

Scientist and philosopher Vandana Shiva explains how “everything begins with seed,” and addresses the perils of patenting them. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology, economy, and humanity, and sees this as the latest battleground in the war on Planet Earth.

Bringing the Flavors of Mexico to Seattle

Devon Peña, professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle, interviews Sonia (Mendoza) and Carlos Cervantes about produce and prepared food sold in their market, Mendoza’s Mexican Mercado.

How Technology Will Decentralize the Global Food System

Peer-to-peer sharing, traceability and enterprise software are just a few of the ways technology is catalyzing a flexible, resilient and sustainable food system. With food tech as a catalyst, the possibility of an interconnected web of localized food systems within a bigger global food system seems possible. Speaking from the Summit, Jeremy Rifkin, President of the Foundation on Economic Trends discusses the shift from point source to distributed thinking and implications for our food systems.

Tom Baker: The Starter

Tom Baker (yes, that IS his last name) is an artisan baker and uses a wood fired “Earth Oven” to bake bread. He runs his business Loaf, a bakery and cookery school, from his home in Stirchley, Birmingham, UK.

The Global Village Construction Kit

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch.

And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000). Call it a “civilization starter kit.”

When a Town Saves a Grocery Store

Boarded up store fronts are a common sight in small towns across the heartland. But many rural communities are coming together to save their heritage and their towns. In the small Colorado town of Walsh, townspeople and farmers crafted a plan to keep the town’s grocery story alive and profitable.