The climate crisis cannot be solved without navigating the dilemma of food. In the United States, overall greenhouse gas emissions are decreasing — but food emissions continue to surge. Globally, as much as one third of emissions come from food. At the same time, 9% of people globally face food insecurity and recent inflation has highlighted that many cannot afford a healthy diet. Further complicating the dilemma, 30–40% of the food we produce is never eaten.
Through its Dilemma Series, TED Countdown convenes differing perspectives to have tough conversations around difficult issues — so that arguments can be transformed into action, building the collective solutions required to solve the climate crisis. The question facing participants in TED’s most recent installment of the Dilemma Series was: Can we nourish 10 billion people while restoring the Earth?
Our food system is complex, and innovators are taking on food’s climate impacts from many angles. Learn about powerful work being done to change the future of food — and the win-win solutions that could reverse the track we are on.
Fixing Food Waste
Food waste is one of our biggest climate issues — total emissions from wasted food are more than the emissions of all but two countries (the US and China). When food makes its way to landfills, it produces methane — a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat at about eighty times the rate of carbon dioxide. At the same time, producing food is resource-intensive, requiring significant land, water, energy, labor and money. Paradoxically, food insecurity, hunger and lack of access to healthy diets continues to be a global issue.
ReFED is a US nonprofit focused on tackling these issues by bringing together actors across the food system and designing collaborative solutions. TED speaker and ReFED President Dana Gunders shared five tips for tackling waste:
- Shop Smarter: Making grocery lists and meal planning before you shop ensures the items you place in your cart end up on a plate.
- Love Your Leftovers: Get in the habit of eating the food you’ve already made before making more. Consider how you can transform your leftovers into new dishes.
- Freeze Your Food: Leftovers and perishables last much longer when frozen — Dana reminds us that even foods like bread, milk and cheese can be frozen until you’re ready to eat them.
- Use It Up: Before buying new food, Dana encourages everyone to “shop your fridge.” We often forget what’s there — a quick look also ensures any new items we buy help us use up what we already have.
- Learn Your Labels: Labels can be confusing — don’t assume the date on the package means the food is no longer edible. The USDA Foodkeeper App provides guidelines on how long specific foods last and actions you can take to extend both shelf life and taste.
Other organizations are focused on solutions that get food to those in need. In TED's Food for the Future film, host Manoush Zomorodi meets with Jasmine Crowe-Houston to learn how her company Goodr has developed technology and logistics solutions to distribute surplus food to families, children and seniors who need it. Any inedible food Goodr collects is taken to partner farms or composted — none ends up in landfills. Through Jasmine’s solution, food companies reduce waste and save on management fees. With tax deductions from donations, Goodr has produced an overall cost savings for many of its partners.
Upgrading the “Food Grid”
Transitioning the food system to climate-smart infrastructure and practices requires investment. Just like upgrading our power grid to renewable energy, we need to transform how food is grown, harvested, processed, transported and sold. We need a new “food grid.”
When Chef Anthony Myint began exploring how he could support regenerative agriculture through his restaurant, he realized how little support existed for farmers looking to adopt climate-friendly practices. His organization Zero Foodprint focuses on creating the infrastructure needed so that more farmers can “farm with nature instead of against it.” They have worked with food and beverage businesses — from local restaurants to international chains — to redistribute 1% of customer bills to farmers testing and scaling regenerative practices. This collective approach is enabling local, affordable solutions with direct climate impact.
Embracing Our Deep Relationship with Food
Some of the most promising solutions to the climate–food dilemma require us to change the way we eat. But shifting diets is not as straightforward as switching to renewable energy or taking low-carbon transportation. How we grow, buy and prepare food is deeply rooted in culture, place, health and identity. How can we supercharge climate solutions with a culturally attuned approach?
Entrepreneur Pinky Cole saw an opportunity to launch a vegan food brand that wasn’t about “doing the right thing” — it was about flavor. The vegan brands she saw on the market couldn’t compete with mainstream ones, so she saw a chance to “add some razzle dazzle to vegan food.” At Slutty Vegan, she’s developed relatable messaging and fun flavors — and it’s worked. (Seventy percent of the chain’s customers are meat eaters.) Chef Sam Kass agrees that climate-conscious eating needs to meet people where they are. Convincing eaters to overhaul their diet is tough — but cutting out meat or animal products completely isn’t the only pathway. If a significant portion of the population shifted to eating meat just once per week, we could collectively leap toward emissions targets.
Food entrepreneur Helianti Hilman reinforces the message that “there is no need for a one-size-fits-all diet.” By embracing long-held cultural foodways, we may rediscover climate-friendly practices. She has collaborated with thousands of agricultural producers across Indonesia to support their Indigenous food biodiversity and heritage — and advocates valuing these diverse practices as climate-friendly alternatives to the monocultures dominating agriculture.
Supporting Food System Workers
The food sector is labor-intensive, and workers face challenges including low wages and hazardous conditions. But innovators across agriculture, food production and waste management are creating new models that improve both workers’ lives and climate outcomes.
Farm worker Gerardo Reyes Cháves and farm owner Jon Esformes created The Fair Food Program — a human rights initiative designed by and for workers to improve conditions, guarantee fair labor and eliminate abuse. As global temperatures rise, more farm workers face extreme weather. In response, the Fair Food Program developed standards and safety measures for heat exposure. The result is a win–win: farms in the program can ensure operations continue under extreme conditions, while workers’ health and wellbeing are protected.
In Brazil, Aline Sousa leads a grassroots network of wastepickers called CENTCOOP. In many cities, informal laborers are essential to waste management — developing their own systems to collect, reuse and recycle waste while generating income. CENTCOOP’s systems that are 40% more efficient than formal companies and process types of waste that would otherwise end up in landfills. Yet they’re often excluded from city and financial programs. CENTCOOP is working to change that, including through a scalable, coop-run organic waste program that would create more than double the jobs of a standard waste management company.
Rethinking Food Finance
Money was the one topic that ran through all the talks and discussions at the TED Countdown convening — in our current food system, financial incentives maintain harmful practices, and more investment is needed to scale climate-smart solutions.
Financier Berry Marttin is trying to change this — developing new financial products that center farmers’ needs and promote earth-friendly practices. He identifies key levers to better align finance, food and climate. First, transition investments must account for risk — some climate experiments and regenerative crops will fail. Embedding diversity in both practice and income can reduce this risk. Second, technology and services should support greenhouse gas tracking — so farmers can focus on farming.
Government subsidies also influence climate practices. Sarah Lake, of Tilt Collective, has studied how the US meat industry’s growth was supported by policy — and how similar tools could be applied to plant-rich food systems. Her team’s research shows these investments could yield five times the return of investments in renewables and four times that of electric vehicles.
