Danielle Nierenberg is President of Food Tank and an expert on sustainable agriculture and food issues. She has written extensively on gender and population, the spread of factory farming in the developing world and innovations in sustainable agriculture.
Danielle co-founded Food Tank, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, in 2013 as an organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Already, the organization boasts more than twenty major institutional partners including Bioneers, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Christensen Fund, IFPRI, IFAD, the Global Forum on Agriculture Research, Oxfam America, Slow Food USA, the UNEP, the UNDP, FAO, and the Sustainable Food Trust. Danielle has also recruited more than 40 of the world’s top leaders in food and agriculture policies and advocacy work as part of Food Tank’s Advisory Board. The organization will be hosting the 1st Annual Food Tank Summit in January 2015 partnering with The George Washington University.
Prior to starting Food Tank, Danielle spent two years traveling to more than 35 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, meeting with farmers and farmers’ groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, along with journalists, documenting what’s working to help alleviate hunger and poverty, while protecting the environment.
Her knowledge of global agriculture issues has been cited widely in more than 8,000 major print and broadcast outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Le Monde (France), the Mail and Guardian (South Africa), the East African (Kenya), TIME magazine, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, Voice of America, the Times of India, the Sydney Morning Herald, and many, many more.
Danielle has authored or contributed to several major reports and books, including Happier Meals: Rethinking the Global Meat Industry (2005), State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet (Editor and Project Director, 2011), Eating Planet 2012 (2012), Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability (2012), and Food Tank by the Numbers: Family Farming Report.
A natural leader, she has spoken at hundreds of major conferences and events all over the world, including The World Food Prize/Borlaug Dialogues (2010 and 2012), the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development (2012), the Third Annual James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards (2013), UNFCCC COP 16 (2012), the Barilla Center for Food Nutrition Annual Forums (2011 2012, 2013), Edible Institute (2014), the Aspen Institute Environment Forum (2011), the European Commission Green Week (2010), Chicago Council Global Food Security Symposium (2014), National Geographic’s Food: A Forum (2014), the Sustainable Food Summit (2012), the Fourth National Conference for Women in Sustainable Agriculture (2013), the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders Network (2011), the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation (2011), the Hilton Humanitarian Awards (2013), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2011), the Global Forum and Expo on Family Farming (2014), the Permaculture Conference (2013), the Food and Agriculture Organization (2011), Women Deliver (2013) and many others. Additionally, Food Tank routinely convenes large sold-out events in cities from New York to Chicago.
In addition, she has built a worldwide social media and web following of more 500,000 including 124,000 weekly newsletter subscribers from 190 countries; 250,000 combined Facebook fans; 212,000 combined Twitter followers; 10,500 Instagram followers; and 6,000 Pinterest followers. Also, her YouTube videos have garnered several hundred thousand combined views as well. FoodTank’s website receives nearly 100,000 unique visitors a month.
Danielle has an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and spent two years volunteering for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic.
