How chefs can change the world

About 80 percent of the world’s food crops have gone extinct. That's 80 percent. Here's how we can fix it.

I believe chefs can be changemakers in the world.

They hold unique sway over taste and perception—as well as credibility.

Look at the Farm-to-Fork movement. Just a few generations ago, all meals were farm-to-fork, but over time the relationship between land, farmers and eaters changed dramatically. Farmers began growing for corporations and commodities markets. Food increasingly became something packaged — boxed, shrink-wrapped, frozen, prepped for a microwave.

People in restaurants and strolling supermarket aisles lacked context for the steaks, tomatoes and scoops of ice cream they were putting in their mouths. Was the cow raised a few miles away, or across an ocean? The tomatoes — did these New World fruits always have the texture of cotton, and a flavor only mildly more assertive than water? Did the dairy in that scoop of peach ice cream come from one multi-generation farm in Wisconsin, or a dairy cooperative in Argentina? And does the faint peach flavor come from fruit, or additives?

For chefs, flavor, aroma and texture are paramount. When they began sourcing ingredients incandescent with bright flavor and grown locally, and then trumpeting their ingredients on menus, things began to shift. Farmers' markets began multiplying. Chain supermarkets started championing the provenance of their vegetables, their meat and seafood, their dairy. The organic movement gained a powerful voice, and a seal from the United States Department of Agriculture. Manufacturers began celebrating the ingredients in their pints of peach ice cream and jars of marinara sauce.

When I grew up in Pennsylvania in the 70’s & 80’s, supermarket tomatoes were uniformly red, carrots orange, beets purple, and unless we bought them from a farm stand we had no idea where they came from. It wasn’t until many years later as a young cook that I found an abundance of multi-colored heirloom tomatoes, peppers, summer squashes, eggplants and melons. I also discovered a supply chain deeply committed to sourcing the very best plants with minimum inputs and maximum care.

With all of this in mind — much of which finds a home in the Slow Food movement — I started Tender Greens in 2006 with a mission to make good food, real food, whole food available to everyone at an affordable price.

Chefs have shifted perceptions about food, plucking vegetables like kale and beets out of obscurity and showcasing them on the menus of hot restaurants nationwide. Kale, for instance, was once a limp leaf mainly used as décor on a hotel room service platter. Now it thrives as a delicious and nutritious ingredient, finding its way into everything from smoothies and chips to salads, pizza toppings and pesto. The credit for the transformation, I believe, goes to restaurants and cooks.

The idea as chefs as influencers was top of mind last fall when I happened to strike up a conversation with Marie Haga at a Hollywood event. I was rapt by our conversation. Haga is executive director of the Crop Trust, which runs an international seed storage facility located deep inside a mountain in an archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The facility is considered one of the most secretive places on Earth.

Storing up to 2.5 billion seeds, the vault is designed to survive natural and man-made disasters to ensure humanity conserves crop diversity for future food security—especially important as we face overpopulation, global warming and crop extinction. 

In fact, we already are sliding toward extinction with most of the world’s crops due to disease, pests and food industrialization. About 80 percent of the world’s food crops have gone extinct. That’s 80 percent.

As a food executive, I long have been worried that our global food system is at risk of losing diversity to monocropping of the five major commodities. In fact, corn, wheat, rice and soybeans make up 60% of the world’s food.

How will we feed an estimated 9 billion people sustainably? The answer: Crop diversity and sustainable agriculture. They’re key to the protecting our planet, our health and our unique regional food cultures.

But that lesson is lost on most people. Mention biodiversity and the importance of crop diversity, and most people’s eyes glaze over. It’s too big of a problem. Too esoteric and out of reach for most people.

Marie said she needed voices. She needed thought leaders and pop culture influencers to make crop diversity tangible. That’s when it hit me.

Chefs should raise their voices. Not all of us are exactly pop culture stars (although our ranks certainly include them) but together we can be rowdy and loud and help get things done, which is sort of how our kitchens tend to work.

If local farmers can successfully grow these forgotten fruits and vegetables from seeds that have been stored inside the seed vault and haven’t been farmed in decades or hundreds of years, then we, chefs and restaurant owners, can change how the broader population thinks about their food. It goes back to farm-to-fork. Farmers grow the good stuff. And then we put it on thrones and deliver it to diners, who want more and more of the good stuff.

A couple of days after that conversation with Marie we decided to create a partnership called the Spice of Life Project in which our favorite farmers in Los Angeles and New York and folks at the USDA genebank would begin introducing forgotten plants back into the food culture. In January, I spent time in London to meet with Marie, the Prince of Wales — a huge advocate for food sustainability — and about forty other chefs, restaurant owners and food organizations, including Google Food.

We now are selecting seeds and plan to plant this month. Those plants that are most successful in the field and exciting on plates will be grown at scale and served at our restaurants by early summer in both New York and in California.

Our intention: set that second global food revolution into motion.