FOOD PEOPLE: Conversations With the People Shaping Food and Agriculture

In the first episode of FOOD PEOPLE, we interview a professor inspiring the next generation of chefs to bring biodiversity and local food into the kitchen

Welcome to the first edition of FOOD PEOPLE, where we share the stories that shape the future of food and farming.

In this new video series, FOOD PEOPLE, we will explore the influences, insights, and issues involving the people who produce and prepare our food.

For the inaugural episode, Farm Generations Cooperative co-founder and CEO Lindsey Lusher Shute (she/her) interviews Dr. Taylor Reid (he/him), assistant professor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) School of Liberal Arts and Applied Food Studies.

The two met advocating for young farmers over two farm bill campaigns, and are now working together to get more local food into colleges, institutions, and restaurants.

Over the next two years, the Culinary Institute of America and Farm Generations Cooperative will collaborate with Hudson Valley farmers to dramatically increase the amount of local food sourced by the CIA by way of the farmer-owned cooperative’s wholesale platform, GrownBy. This project was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP).

Together, we hope to transform CIA into a local food purchasing powerhouse, while establishing a model for other institutions around the country to follow. This collaborative project aims to simplify local food sourcing, selling, and purchasing to ensure eating local is more accessible for everyone involved.

Watch the interview as Lusher Shute and Dr. Reid discuss the importance of maintaining biodiversity, the challenges and impact of sourcing local food, and the indispensable role of independent farmers and the chefs who shape America’s culinary landscape.

Continue reading for a transcript of the interview, and learn more about our goals and objectives for the LFPP project to bring more local food to more institutions across the nation.

Interview Transcript

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hey, I’m Lindsey and welcome to FOOD PEOPLE. This is a new series where we are interviewing people who are changing food. Our first guest is Dr Taylor Reid, professor of Applied Food Studies at the Culinary Institute of America and we’re going to be talking about why biodiversity matters to chefs. We’re also going to be talking about solving the problem of getting local food from farms into to institutions like the Culinary Institute, hospitals, schools, and more. Why is that so challenging to do?

I had a great time interviewing Taylor and I hope you enjoy this.

Alright. We’re recording. Hi, Taylor.

Hi, Lindsey.

[Why does biodiversity matter to chefs?]

Biodiversity is the palate for the chef. And what I mean, I do mean the palate. But I also mean like the palette — like an artist has a palette with all of the colors of paint on it. If you’re a great artist, you can paint a beautiful picture, I’m sure, with four colors. But if you have 35 colors, you just have much more to work with. And it’s the same with chefs.

You know, my students come in[to class] and they’re comfortable with eleven vegetables. They don’t know what a kohlrabi is. And so understanding biodiversity is important for that reason, because these are the products that we work with in the kitchen. [The ingredients] are the most important tools that they have. You can make a great meal with a dull knife. You can’t ever make a great meal with crappy food. It’s just not possible. So that’s the first thing. It’s important that students understand this because these [ingredients] are their tools.

It seems to me, that in addition to making those choices and having an awareness of those choices, exposing customers and eaters to those choices [is important] too. And those more than the 11 vegetables they might be familiar with. Chefs are incredible teachers in that way as well.

I think more than ever, chefs have a public platform and a presence in our culture that really makes them ambassadors for food more than just providers of food.

Yes. We are doing this project together to work on wholesale to expand the GrownBy platform to incorporate wholesale. This is being funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) through a grant program. When we wrote this grant together, I was just thrilled to be able to [work] with the CIA on this project. Why were you interested?

I grew up in a rural community next to a dairy farm. And we had this amazing relationship where they plow and manure our garden in the spring. And we would help them put hay in the summer, and we made maple syrup together in the winter.

[That farm] was the foundation of our community. And as I’m sure you’ve seen, local little dairy farms don’t really exist in New England anymore. They’re all massive. And when that dairy farm closed, it really changed the fabric of our community, and I felt its loss deeply.

Since that time, really, I’ve been focused on my entire career thinking about how to rebuild local food — more than food systems, like communities. I think farms are the foundation of healthy communities.

Through my work, I’ve always been committed to supporting small farms, local food, sustainable production practices, regenerative farming. I think the easiest way — the best way — to have an impact in terms of sourcing for an institution like the Culinary Institute is to focus on local and that’s because local products are better. And it’s easier to sell, you know. For chefs that might be the extent of their focus; [they think] “I just want the best arugula.” But those things are almost always aligned and you just can’t get products here [in the Northeast] from California in less than a week. Even a week is tight.

It’s really a combination of those things. It’s something that I’m deeply committed to because I believe that it will improve our world. And I think it’ll be better for the Culinary Institute and better for us all as eaters if our students and our chefs are accessing and valuing local products.

What do you think is going to be the biggest obstacle to try to overcome in this work [of sourcing seasonal food from local farmers to large institutions]?

There are several of them. The ridiculously low prices that commodity crops can be sold for or are sold for that are coming from the global market. And that’s always going to be a challenge because [CIA is] a not-for-profit institution. We don’t have a huge endowment, and our food costs are a big operating cost for us. It’s big. So we have to be conscious of that because the difference in pennies on broccoli can be a big driver for whether we’re in the red or in the black.

Some of [the issue] is logistics. We have a storeroom that does all of our intake, and then the storeroom distributes to the five restaurants on campus and the 25 teaching kitchens or 35 teaching kitchens — I don’t even know how many. And then we have 20 bake shops. So it’s really complicated when figuring out the logistics of that.

All of [our food] comes through one single loading dock. It’s just complicated the way that we source and distribute food here.

The thing that’s the least of a challenge that I thought might be is chefs’ interest in purchasing local products. By and large, they’re excited about [this collaboration with Farm Generations Coop] and they can’t wait to get their hands on better quality produce from farmers in the Hudson Valley. That piece is pretty easy. It’s all of these other things that create challenges for us.

More specifically in a teaching kitchen, in the CIA’s curriculum, every student has to learn so many techniques and prepare certain types of dishes. Do you think it’s important that local food is used in those test kitchens and classrooms?

I do. Because our food system choices have such a big impact on our world in other ways. We should be building and supporting sustainable modes of production. Local farms tend to be more sustainable. They’re more likely to be regenerative — truly regenerative — in their practices.

In terms of, like, when you’re just practicing cutting a potato, does it matter for the student whether it’s a local potato or a potato from Idaho that’s been stored in a barn for six months? Maybe not. But almost all of our food gets eaten at some point. If we can figure out how to [source ingredients more sustainably], if we can overcome those logistical challenges, why not have better quality products? Then our students learn to work with the best quality products.

In two years, where would you like to see the CIA in terms of local food? What is your vision for how this project might impact the future of the school?

I’m trying to be careful to be realistic about it. What I want is for us to value [sourcing food locally] and to be actively working on the process and achieving sequentially more and more product from local farms. It’s more about process than outcome for me. As long as we’re committed to it, and we’re working on trying to figure it out. That’s what I want to see.

The bigger impact than how much local food [the CIA] sources, is that when our students go out into the world — because we graduate hundreds and hundreds of chefs every year — they recognize the value of local [food sourcing] and they take that [principle with them] to wherever they end up working and apply that in their work. That, to me, is the most important thing.

Menus of Change aims to spark new insights and solutions surrounding taste, health, and the environment. Learn more.

Join Us at CIA’s Menus of Change Summit in June

📍 Hyde Park, CIA New York Campus
🗓 June 12–13, 2024
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Menus of Change aims to spark new insights and develop innovative solutions surrounding taste, health, the environment, community, business, and economics.

Farm Generations Cooperative CEO Lindsey Lusher Shute will be presenting at the Culinary Institute of America’s 2024 Menus of Change Leadership Summit in June 12–13, 2024. Learn more and purchase tickets here.

Memorable meals and strong communities begin with GrownBy.

GrownBy makes it possible for everyone to eat local. Build your farm shop on the GrownBy Marketplace for free or start shopping at your local farms.

Grow with us at @farmgenerationscoop and @grownbyapp.