Keynote Speakers

Tuesday, October 18 | 8:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m.

Location: Ballroom

Melinda Hemmelgarn, MS, RD, LD Freelance writer, inspirational speaker, award-winning columnist & radio host Beyond Our Plates: Critical Questions to Feed Ourselves Well

Melinda Hemmelgarn is a registered dietitian, “investigative nutritionist,” and award-winning writer and radio host, better known as “the Food Sleuth.” With 30 years’ experience in clinical, academic and public health nutrition, she’s a trusted consumer advocate, dedicated to social and environmental justice.

Prior to her freelance writing and speaking career, Melinda developed and directed the Nutrition Communications Center at the University of Missouri, where she discovered the potential of using media literacy to combat childhood obesity. In 2004, she received a Food and Society Policy Fellowship which allowed her to connect the dots between food, health and agriculture. Today she uniquely applies critical thinking skills to media messages about food and farm policy to advance "food system literacy."

To help fuel the “good food” revolution, Melinda works creatively with her photographer husband on a project called, “F.A.R.M.:” - Food, Art, Revolution, Media – A Focus on Photography to Re-Vitalize Agriculture and Strengthen Democracy.” Their mission: use the synergistic power of compelling images and farmers’ stories to influence public opinion and shape agriculture and health policy.

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Wednesday, October 19 | 11:45 a.m. -1:00 p.m.

Location: Ballroom

Oran Hesterman Founder, President and CEO of Fair Food Network Fair Food: Growing A Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All

Our food system is failing us. Once designed to bring us abundant food at low cost, it now nourishes us by destroying some of what we hold most precious – our environment, our health, and our future. A host of books and films have documented the dangers – from chemical runoff to soaring rates of diet-related illness – but very few have offered any viable solutions. This void in public information is what compelled leading good food pioneer Oran B. Hesterman, Ph.D. to write Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All (Public Affairs Books, May 2011).

Dr. Hesterman, president and CEO of Fair Food Network, shares his inspiring vision for changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold. Fair Food is an enlightening guide in which Dr. Hesterman shows how our food system’s dysfunctions are unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit and convenience, and he defines the new principles that a redesigned food system should embody, as well as the necessary steps to restructuring it.

In Fair Food, Dr. Hesterman also highlights people and organizations around the country who are already integrating these new principles in many creative ways within their enterprises, providing inspiring new models for producers, consumers, businesses and communities.

For those who want to be a part of the fair food movement, Dr. Hesterman’s menu for change suggests how we can participate in collective action to precipitate the transformation of our food system, from the kitchen to the community to the state house to the White House.