Danielle Nierenberg

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 hosted the 1st Annual Food Tank Summit in January 2015 in partnership with The George Washington University. 

Prior to starting Food Tank, Danielle spent two years traveling to more than 60 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), "In a World of Abundance, Food Waste is a Crime," USA Today (June 2010), "Could Acacia Trees Solve Africa's Hunger Problems?" Christian Science Monitor (December 2010), "To Reduce Hunger, Put Innovation on the Menu," The Guardian (December 2010), State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet (Editor and Project Director, 2011), “Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger,” State of the World 2011 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), Eating Planet 2012 (2012), Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability (2012), “The Kindest Cut of Meat Is Ground,” New York Times (2012), “Going Green in 2012,” Chicago Tribune (December 2012), Food Tank by the Numbers: Family Farming Report (2013), “On Food Day, Let's Commit to Healthier Children,” Denver Post (October 2013), “How to Save Water on World Water Day,” Miami Herald (March 2013), “Hungering for a Solution to Food Losses,” Wall Street Journal (2013), Food Tank website: www.foodtank.com (Editor and Creator January 2013-Present), "Food and Agriculture: The Future of Sustainability" Sustainable Development in the 21st century report for Rio+20 (March 2012), "Marylanders Deserve to Know What's in their Food," The Baltimore Sun (March 2014), "As the world's farmers age, new blood is needed," The Des Moines Register (October 2014), "The new yuppies: how to build a generation of tech-savvy farmers," The Guardian (January 2015), "How cultures of herder communities play a big role in habitat conservation," Kenya's Daily Nation (February 2015), "Preserving landscapes will promote health, culture," Santa Fe New Mexican (March 2015), and "Drought: California agriculture can learn from Africa," San Jose Mercury News (March 2015).

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, 2014), Edible Institute (2014), the Aspen Institute Environment Forum (2011), the European Commission Green Week (2010), Chicago Council Global Food Security Symposium (2014, 2015), 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 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (2011), Women Deliver (2013), Permaculture Voices (2013, 2014), Unilever Sustainable Development Group Meetings (2014), Farm to Table International Symposium (2014), International Symposium on Agroecology for Food & Nutrition Security (2014), Clinton School of Public Service (2014), International Fund for Agricultural Development (2014), Milan Protocol Workshop (2014), New York Times Food for Tomorrow (2014), TEDxManhattan (2014), BITE (2015), Expo Milan (2015), 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.

For more about Danielle and her works, go to http://foodtank.com/biography/danielle-nierenberg