Inspiring TED Talks

Posted on September 7, 2015

We’d like to highlight 6 inspiring and informative TED Talks related to the food system and farm to school initiatives. We hope you watch them, share them with colleagues and friends, and are energized with new ideas to continue working towards your goals. There are some incredible people doing amazing work to get our food systems back on track.

  • Ann Cooper: Lunch lessons, changing the way we feed our children
    Ann Cooper is the Director of Food Services for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorodo and the co-founder of Lunch Lessons LLC and Food Family Farming Foundations’ Lunch Box Project.
  • Stephen Ritz: A teacher growing green in the South Bronx
    Stephen Ritz is an educator and administrator in South Bronx, New York. He installed an indoor edible wall in his classroom that feeds 450 students and his program provides training and learning opportunities for his students.
  • Ron Finley: A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA
    Ron Finley started planting vegetable gardens on strips of dirt and unused spaces in one of the poorest neighborhoods in LA, helping and teaching others to do the same. He fought the city when it tried to shut his project down and succeeded in petitioning an enforcement waiver.
  • Birke Baehr: What’s wrong with our food system?
    Birke Baehr was 11 at the time of his Ted Talk. He’s homeschooled, volunteers at farms and the Humane Society, and is planning a career as an organic farmer.
  • Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food
    Jamie Oliver is an English chef turned activist and reality TV star. He’s working in the UK and US to create change in the food system on the individual and governmental levels.
  • Sunny Young: Good Food Can Change Everything
    Sunny young is the director of Edufood Consulting LLC, a school food reform consulting firm, and program manager of Good Food for Oxford Schools (GFOS) in Oxford, MS, a project that combines farm to school initiatives, school gardens, and nutrition education.