About the Discussion
Wasted food in Minnesota annually emits the same greenhouse gas emissions as over 685,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year. Nearly half of this food waste occurs in households — and, at the same time, about one in ten Minnesota households is food insecure.
At our first Second Monday of the 2019-2020 academic year, our panelists will discuss the issue of wasted food at the consumer level of the US food system. They will address how much food is wasted, the environmental and social implications of this waste, the intersection of excess food and hunger relief supply chains, and the opportunities they see for changing our food system to better serve all Americans.
The conversation will feature IonE Fellow Hikaru Peterson of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, Tracey Deutsch of the College of Liberal Arts, and Will Bergstrom, a student member of the UMN’s Food Recovery Network (FRN). Our moderator is Jennifer Schmitt, program director and lead scientist of IonE’s NorthStar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise.
Panel Moderator
Jennifer Schmitt
Jennifer Schmitt’s focus is on sustainable enterprise development and transitions, and she is committed to engaged scholarship. Jennifer’s research focuses on tracing environmental impacts through supply chains, circulating waste back into production systems, and conservation outcomes in Tanzania.
Panelists
Hikaru Peterson
Hikaru Peterson’s research focuses on food and agricultural marketing as well as consumer economics. She’s currently involved in projects that examine economic viability of grocery stores in rural areas, impacts of values-based supply chains on small and medium-size farms, and food waste/recovery efforts.
Will Bergstrom
Will Bergstrom is a fourth year student studying corporate sustainability systems. Will is passionate about working with people and being able to see food that is recovered be put to good use. Will is a student member of the Food Recovery Network (FRN).
Tracey Deutsch
Tracey Deutsch teaches, researches, and writes about gender and women’s history, the history of capitalism, critical food studies, and modern US history. She particularly enjoys looking at sites in which capitalism and gender systems intersect and has particular interests in the uses of historical narratives in contemporary food politics as well as in robust publicly engaged scholarship around issues of food justice.
Coming in November
On the Front Lines: Environmental Justice in the Classroom
How we’re defining — and teaching — the issues at the U and beyondMonday, November 11
3:45 to 5:00
LES Atrium
Register now on Eventbrite