Excerpts from the Future of Food conference

Editor’s note on the Future of Food conference

Consumers are demanding “better-for-you” food at the supermarket, according to Dennis Belcastro, executive vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. “People aren’t stupid. They get it, and they’re beginning to make changes” in what they eat, said Ronald M. Shaich, founder of the Panera Bread restaurant chain. 

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They were among the 30 speakers at the Washington Post Live Future of Food conference last week, many of whom talked about a growing food movement, about rising demands that more Americans — especially the poor — have access to fresh food and that big commercial farmers should not be allowed to pollute the water system with pesticides or feed animals vast amounts of antibiotics. 

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day-long conference was when the keynote speaker, Prince Charles, a longtime organic farmer, addressed the politically sensitive issue of farm subsidies: “what many environmental experts have called the curiously perverse economic incentive system.” Speaking to the crowd at Georgetown University and to a global audience watching live on The Post’s Web site, he asked: “Has the time arrived when a long, hard look is needed at the way public subsidies are generally geared? And should the recalibration of that gearing be considered so that it helps healthier approaches and techniques?” 

They were remarkably pointed questions from the heir to the British throne about critical issues shaping the Future of Food.

— Mary Jordan, editor, Washington Post Live

Ronald M. Shaich, chief executive, founder and chairman, Panera Bread: “If we’re going to serve good food, it’s got to taste good. It’s not enough to set government policy, and it’s not enough to want it. On every menu in every cafe, we provide caloric information. What we found is, for 80 percent of the consumers, it didn’t matter. But for the 20 percent that it did, it affected them; they thought about it and they made some choices. So all of our work over the past decades is getting to people.”

Will Allen, founder and chief executive, Growing Power: “We need more people growing food in their back yard, side yard, community farm. We need to support those existing farmers that are struggling. Our rural farmers are struggling, and they have been the backbone of our food system for so many years. In 1960, they told us farmers to grow soybeans and corn, fence row to fence row; we were going to feed the world. And we have what? A million less farmers. That system hasn’t worked.”

Robert Ross, president and chief executive officer, the California Endowment: “Nothing short of a powerful movement will reverse the trends that are in front of us. The scientific community first understood that tobacco was bad for your health in 1921. And it wasn’t until 1965 when the Surgeon General got permission to put the warning label on the side of a cigarette pack. It wasn’t until the 1990s when we began to see some of the significant and meaningful policy and practice changes. And again, that victory is not done. So, if we do a side-by-side comparison of the complexity of the issue before us today — health and nutrition and food access and sustainability — compared to tobacco it is a far more complicated and complex undertaking. At the end of the day, that was a power issue, and it continues to be a power issue. And the only way to confront issues of power is to craft a movement that wields power.”