What will be on our table in the year 2050?
Friday, May 22, 2009 • 9:00am-3:30pm
Telluride Conference Center (AKA “High Camp” in the Mountain Village)
The Symposium is an all-day topical immersion that includes presentations, panel discussions and audience Q&A. Admission includes lunch from 12:30-1:30pm.
The way we eat, both on an individual level and globally, is changing rapidly. With obesity and global food prices on the rise, people around the world are trying to make the right food choices for their waistline and their bottom line. At the same time, healthful culinary awareness is growing through localvore and slow food movements, giving people antidotes to heavily processed and excessively transported foods.
"Our last two Moving Mountains Symposia have focused on energy and water, respectively. With all of the current confusion about what to eat - what's really organic, what genetically modified foods are all about, why milk costs so much more all of a sudden - food seemed like a natural fit this year. Like energy and water, food represents an issue of extremely critical and fundamental importance to everyone on Earth. And it's an issue that's deeply mired in misunderstanding, misinformation and mismanagement." -Festival Director David Holbrooke
The Symposium will address the following question:
Of the 6.7 billion people currently living on this planet, one billion of them are overweight, while another 800 million starve. The present day agriculture paradigm, which incorporates troubling practices like monocultures, CAFO's, and the government-subsidized production of high-fructose corn syrup, clearly cannot adequately feed our current population.
So, what are we going to do in 2050 when demographers estimate there will be an additional 2.5 billion people on the planet?
We have assembled a wide-ranging lineup of scientists, chefs, thinkers and activists who can frame both the problems and potential solutions. We hope you walk away from the symposium with a better sense of what to put on your own table.
Symposium Speakers
Symposium Talks
Dan Barber - "What is the future of flavor?"
Dan is the chef at Blue Hill, a leader in using fresh and local food in restaurants, especially off of the farm Stone Barns where his restaurant is located. Dan is trying to bring the principles of good farming directly to the table. (more on Dan here)
Gene Baur - "How can we eat in a way that is humane to both humans and animals?"
The founder of Farm Sanctuary, an activist group that is working to end cruelty to farm animals, and author of the bestseller by the same name, which tells the story of his group's undercover investigations of slaughterhouses that were involved in inhumane practices. (more on Gene here)
Ann Cooper
Chef Ann Cooper is school lunch advocate and author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. She is also a former Telluride resident.
Dennis Dimick - "What is happening to our soil?"
National Geographic executive director is returning to Mountainfilm to address the increasing pressures imposed on Earth's already fragile soil by poor crop choices and a changing climate. (more on Dennis here)
Jerry Glover - "How can we save our soil?"
Nature magazine named Jerry one of the five crop researchers who could change the world with his work at the Land Institute. His work on perennials, like wheat, could have a huge effect on the way we grow food.
Manny Howard - "How I tried to live off of my own land - in Brooklyn."
Manny Howard wrote a piece for New York Magazine about living off his own land - in Brooklyn, NY, a social experiment that went awry. (more on Manny here)
Dave James - "How does a truly holistic ranch system work?"
Dave James runs James Family Ranch in the Animas River Valley, 10 miles north of Durango, which adheres to the ranching practices of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. He makes sure his ranch works in an effective and holistic way without any chemicals or non-natural influences. (more on Dave here)
Bill McKibben - "How did our food system become so broken and how do we fix it?"
Pioneering American environmental writer and sustainability advocate Bill McKibben will be the keynote speaker at the Moving Mountains Symposium. "Get big or get out" was the mandate of Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture. Bill will talk about how Benson's creation - a system that has 10 cents of every American food dollar going to Nabisco - is in danger of collapsing in on itself. Then, he will explain what a new food paradigm - one that is sustainable and equitable and locally-oriented - would look like. (more on Bill here)
Peter Menzel & Faith D'Aluisio - "What do people eat around the world?"
Peter & Faith have traveled around the world photographing what people eat in a week and documenting the ubiquitous spread of the American appetite for fast and highly processed food. With a slide show presentation, they will show how the American food appetite is being adopted around the world. They will show how indigenous food has to stay indigenous. (more on Peter & Faith here)
Roz Naylor - "What does a truly sustainable food system look like in 2050?"
Roz Naylor is the Director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. She has been involved in a number of field-level research projects throughout the world concerning issues of aquaculture production, high-input agricultural development, biotechnology, climate-induced yield variability, and food security. (more on Roz here)
Helena Norberg-Hodge - "How has the global food system come about and how can it be changed?"
Helena is a leading analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the localization movement. (more on Helena here)
Pamela Ronald - "What role should genetically engineered foods have in our food supply?"
Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, Pamela Ronald is married to an organic farmer. She will discuss the book she wrote with her husband entitled Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food. (more on Pamela here)
Ming Tsai - Introduction
Renowned chef Ming Tsai will be the Symposium emcee. Ming owns the restaurant, Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Massachusetts and is the host of Simply Ming on Public Television. He is also the national spokesperson for the Food and Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). (more on Ming here)
Joshua Viertel
As a teacher, farmer and activist, Joshua Viertel has been involved in the sustainable food movement for years. Now as the new President of Slow Food USA, Viertel believes that "Good, clean fair food can no longer be considered a privilege; we must acknowledge it as a right." (more on Joshua here)
