Food Tank recently had the opportunity to speak with Thomas Forster of EcoAgriculture Partners, who was one of the speakers at the 2015 Food Tank Summit in partnership with The George Washington University.
Food Tank (FT): What will your message be at the Food Tank Summit?
Thomas Forster (TF): The future of sustainable food systems demands transformation of the relationship between urban and rural landscapes and communities in order to shift to an integrated, equitable and ecological approach to feeding an increasingly urban planet.
(FT): How are you contributing to building a better food system?
(TF): By shifting policies and international strategies like the sustainable development agenda to support integrated city region food systems around the world. By showing cities, national governments, and businesses that investment in city region level planning and coordination pays off with better disaster resilience, healthier, more prosperous people, and a cleaner and safer environment.
(FT): What are the biggest obstacles or challenges you face in achieving your organization’s goals?
(TF): The dominant industrial and vertically integrated commodity monoculture paradigm, with supporting policy and economic regimes that prop up unsustainable high technology and high carbon dependent food supply chains.
(FT): Who is your food hero and why?
(TF): My food hero is the social philosopher Murray Bookchin, who first brought attention to the “anonymity” of the commodity supply system as the enemy of sustainable food and agriculture systems.
(FT): In 140 characters or less what is the most important thing we can all do to help change the food system?
(TF): Go beyond food fashion to what transforms how we are fed, past fossil fuel-based industrial food to bio-based agroecologically grown food.
