Meet the Food Pioneers
Entomologist and entrepreneur Pam Marrone remembers the time moths invaded her family's garden. When her father sprayed a prized dogwood tree to ward them off, Marrone was dismayed that all the bees died, too. She says she knew then that she would go on to study entomology.
"I've been wanting to kill pests without chemicals since I was about 8," she says. Now, as the founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, she is doing just that. In late April, presenting her with the 2011 Growing Green Award in the business category, NRDC recognized Marrone for her pioneering work producing biopesticides that don't harm workers, consumers, or the environment. The company's sales are expected to climb to $8 million in 2011, double the figure in 2006, its first year.
"Our products lead to better results and higher yields, so they're replacing chemical sprays in conventional farming," she says. "This is the product that can meet the need for increased food production in the most sustainable way." Other 2011 winners are Jim Cochran, the first organic strawberry farmer in California (see "Kicking the Chemical Habit"); Ann Cooper, an advocate for fresh, nutritious school lunches (see "Serving Suggestion"); and Molly Rockamann, who teaches urban dwellers to grow their own food (see "She's All That").
Judges for the 2011 awards included the acclaimed author Michael Pollan, the award-winning chef Dan Barber, the organic food advocate and media mogul Maria Rodale, and Tom Tomich, who founded the Agricultural Sustainability Institute, which promotes research and education throughout the University of California system.
For Ann Cooper, this year's winner in the knowledge leader category, sustainable change may begin with food production, but it continues with food preparation in school lunchrooms across America. Cooper took a winding path to the cafeteria: she graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and served as executive chef on a cruise ship before moving to Vermont and getting involved in the local food movement. In 1999, when she was asked to consider an executive chef position at a school in East Hampton, New York, she balked. "What, me? Lunch lady?" she remembers thinking. "No way." But then she had a change of heart. "We're killing our kids with food. Children today are at risk of dying at a younger age than their parents," she says. "It's pretty clear we need to fix this."
More than a decade later, Cooper proudly calls herself the Renegade Lunch Lady. With her Food Family Farming (F3) Foundation, she is on a mission to make the country's children healthier through two main projects. The first, a partnership with Whole Foods, is bringing salad bars to hundreds of school cafeterias; the second, a new Web site called The Lunch Box, arms schools with free recipes and resources to eliminate processed foods from meals without raising costs.
"Access to healthy food is the social justice issue of our time," Cooper says. "Who wants to live in a country where you have to be rich to be healthy?"
