Lights… Camera… Food system action!
Storytelling is a powerful catalyst for education, connection, and transformation, and filmmakers and documentarians are highlighting inspiring people and unsung innovations in food systems across the globe.
“Stories and food are what make us human,” says Haven Worley, Director of “Irish Farmers: A Love Story,” at the All Things Food & Agriculture Film Festival, hosted by Food Tank in partnership with Kat Taylor, President of TomKat Foundation; Halter; The Henry Ford; The Rockefeller Foundation; and Groundswell during Climate Week NYC.
Watch the livestream recording on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.
“As conveners, as storytellers, we can share what’s working across the country,” says Spence Medford, Senior Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer at The Henry Ford, after screening the foundation’s new “Farm to School Lunch Across America” film. “There’s innovation that’s happening in the food system right now; people just don’t know about it.”
At Climate Week, the packed audience also enjoyed a screening of clips from the documentary short “Language of the Land,” produced by Halter. The film follows 5th-generation ranchers Kacie and Zach Scherler-Abney of Scherler-Abney Land & Cattle, as they transition their Oklahoma farm to regenerative practices.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see producers from different parts of the world who share this goal and really want to work with one another,” says Helen Moore, VP of Commercial Strategy at Halter.
“Especially with our generation, there’s a huge interest in agriculture and…a real genuine interest in connecting with food sources,” Zach Scherler-Abney added.
In introducing the “Powered By Community” film series, a grassroots project highlighting local changemakers, Big Green president Madeleine Nelson reminded the crowd that “Small can scale.”
“These local projects are part of the solutions that we need to change the food system for the better,” she says.
Jennifer Sherman, Program Director at the Alice Waters Institute, echoed this sentiment.
“There is no change that is too small,” she says.
Then, Kat Taylor, Founder of TomKat Ranch and TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation, and director and producer Rebecca Harrell Tickell took the stage with clips from “Groundswell,” the feature-length documentary that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
“The farmers are not only right; we should be listening to them more often and enabling them more, and giving them more agency,” Taylor says.
When pitching the film project, back in 2013, the team faced pushback from producers who didn’t believe regenerative agriculture was actually transformative, Harrell Tickell recalled. The film has been its own proof-of-concept.
“They laughed us out of Hollywood,” Harrell Tickell says. “We were filming a movement as it was coalescing. … It feels like we’re just getting started even though it’s been over a decade to get to this point.”
Stories like these, filmmakers said, only reinforce the importance of storytellers following their passions and telling true stories.
“We have to fight to curate and support and bubble up hope,” says Sara Farley, Regenerative School Meals Co-Lead and Vice President for the Food Team at The Rockefeller Foundation. She presented clips from “Food 2050,” which she described as a radical listening project.
“The future isn’t written,” she continued. “Use the creative part of your brain to imagine the future.”
Explore the entire Food Tank event schedule during Climate Week NYC 2026, and live-stream every Summit on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel.
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Photo by Ryan Rose for Food Tank.
