[gavel pounds] hello, welcome to tonights program at the Commonwealth Club of california. Our program for tonight food fights for the 21stcentury first century. Womens voices driving change. We have the executive director of moms across america, the founder and executive director of teens turning green and our host and moderator is the ceo of tech talk studio. Now im going to turn it over to christy dames. Thank you. Thank you to the Commonwealth Club. We really appreciate being here tonight. I am really excited to have these really powerful women. Some are moms. Some are not. My first question to deborah garcia. You have two major awardwinning films. Youre quite the vocal activist and speaker. You have a famous husband, jerry garcia. How did you come to make films about food . You have been a film maker for a long time. In 1970 when i was in college, i started making food, and because of that era, activity land, going natural about that, i became vegetarian, became kind of a organic fanatic and felt much better and felt very committed to that. I knew at some point i wanted to make films. I did not start off making documentaries. I did not make documentaries for many years. But i was when to make films about the food system and why people should demand a food system a healthier food system. So, that first film i made was the future of food which came out about 15 years ago. That way was talking about the perfect food system. They were talking about the perfect pair pear, lovely bread. Which is important. But i want to talk about the seas applied, all of this which was really under the water. I did not know that, and i was an extremely informed consumer. I was very popular. Netflix bought it a few thousand copies. Whole foods carried it. We had this Great Program where people could buy bulk copies, 200 copies and sent to all of their friends. After four years of that, i decided to go more deeply into that same realm, so i made the film symphony of soil. Which is about soil. Our relationship to soil. And it even looks at agriculture from soils point of view. You do not want to poison it. You do not want to kill it. You want to give back to it. It is promoting healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy planet, which i think we need to demand. We need to serve and we need to get it. Beautiful. Thank you. Next, we have the executive director of moms across america. There is even a moms across the globe that has taken off. Every year at the fourth of july there are 172 parades. She is a major voice. She was just invited to the epa a few weeks ago because there was such a major storm that happened across the country and they asked her to come to washington. Zen, how did you become involved in food activism . I love my kids. They have food allergies. Dairy, gluten, knots. The dairy, wheat, gluten, and nuts allergies, i had heard those before. At the caring dn it was like carageenan . It isnt just about everything kids like. Even organic food, unfortunately. When i heard that it can cause stomach ulcers and cancer, what we dont see is extremely important as well. The inflammation on the outside is a warning light for what is going on on the inside. I started to research about food. I watched food inc. I watched ted talks. And i found gmls genetically gmos, genetically modified organisms we went as gml free as possible. My sons mouth swelled up. Within four months, it was almost gone. When i saw my Childrens Health improve i got very involved with property seven. It was election night. I was sitting in the back of the room. The leader at the front of the room, she had done landmark, which is personal training in leadership and all that. She had done it and i had done it. And i thought, why is she up there and i am back here . What is my role in this campaign and this cause . And i realized i had just inconveniently involved. I was helping out. And i asked myself, what if i took on, i am the one to transform the Food Industry . Not mean myself, but my actions. I am taking it on. I knew the results would be completely different than being someone who else out. So i asked itself, how can i let as many people know about gmos in as short amount of time as possible. I came up with the idea of fourth of july parades. We will go to our local fourth of july parades where the permits, the porta potty is already set up. We will hold up a banner and say moms across america march to label gmos. Everybody know that a Everybody Knows that a moms only special interest is her children. This is why moms are so important. We have done lots of other things, too, which we will get involved in later. Thank you. Our third panelist is judi shils. She is the mom of erin shrody. The two of you did something important. Can you tell us how you came to food . Actually all of my life changed when my daughter was born. I read a book called diet for a poisoned planet. In a day my entire kitchen went from conventional to organic and i never looked back. I realize the child i was carrying in may needs to come into a clean world. She grew up and some years later i realized i needed to do for her and for her peer group everything i could possibly do to sustain the world, so we started something called teens turning green, which is now much more college turning green. So many of these students are here with me tonight. Basically our goal is to march around to College Campuses to really affect change. My role as my daughters role and that is really to be mentors. We have to teach them how to fight the fight. Food, this year, has become a huge one for us. There is a lot of food justice initiatives on College Campuses. There are a lot of food policy committees, as there should be. The food that is being sent to our children from the time they are in preschool through college is some of the most terrific food there is, i think we all know that. Filled with everything were hearing about. This particular year, i decided we were going to do something about food. You can absolutely change the food in your school, the food in your life, in your refrigerator. But the school piece i never really saw happen. I decided we were going to focus on a school in our immunity, very underserved, which is in marin county marin county. Our goal was nongmo, zero waste. Everybody said youre out of your mind. This can happen. I shot off an email to the superintendent. I said, i want to change her food he your food program. Can i . He said absolutely. Then i thought, who am i to change the food system . I did not really know what i was doing. I partnered with a local chef who had a lot of buying power and was pretty wellknown. He opened up a lot of doors with purveyors and farmers and we started on august 28, against all odds. Basically we have done this for a year now and we see healthy kids and kids they care about the land and kids that are learning about the garden and starting a farm on their campus. I think it goes back to each one of us had a passion and we each realized that we had a purpose and that our voices were just as powerful as anybody elses and why not you go i think for my daughter and i, our motto is dream and do, and we teach that to every single student we work with. If you can dream and do something realistically to change the world, you dont have a choice. So, deborah, right out of the box symphony of the soil. Can you talk about the state of our soil . What is, what did you learn from this film . What did you bring through in the film . What is happening with soil . And if you could talk about the World Congress of soil, where you just spoke last week . One of the interesting things, i could not have told anybody about soil before a learned about it. The United States is gifted with a really High Percentage of very good soil. 40 of our soils are excellent soils. We have these resources. And what we would do in america is we would use up the soil and move west. Use it up and move west. There was always so much. There was always more. It actually shaped our character because we dont like limits. When people say to americans, you have to accept limits, we say that is unamerican. Americans about that, it is our resources, but now, if we keep farming the way we are, we will be out of topsoil in 30 years, so we are poisoning our soil, and the whole agricultural system is very destructive to soil, and the way nature works, it gives back. The leaves fall from the tree, and the microorganisms break that down, which can feed the plant that grows, so there is a cycle in nature of giving back. You have to feed the soil. Industrial agriculture takes and takes and takes and does not give back. The soil becomes more depleted, and you have to use more fertilizer, and it depletes the soil. It can kill the soil, and it can deform it. I think in our society, we have mirrored this. Society now, a lot of people just take and take and take you and they dont have to give back, and i think that we need to change this whole system in america to actually bring out this other quality that we have, which is this is a really difficult challenge, and we have to be really smart and really courageous to face it, because we might not be able to do it. And that americans are, we can do it, so i think we need to shift this idea of what it is to be american, to be patriotic. Lets do the right thing for the right reasons, so, yes, they symphony of the soil film, it is a really wonderful film, and we will be selling it afterwards. It is being shown at whole foods, farming festivals, and communities use it. We have sold 30 copies just to schools in iowa, and they show it, the belly of the beast, and they are showing it to farmers at the National Resources conservation service, which is the soil service of the government, part of the department of agriculture, and they have bought copies to show farmers how to do things like planting things like cover crops, turning them back into the soil, and it returns nutrients to the soil so you do not have to use synthetic nitrogen, if any, and so i am happy about that. I like making films that i am passionate about that will change things, because i think a lot of the problems people have withheld health is as they have been saying, we are not growing food in the right way, and even without the toxins, we are not returning nutrients to the soil, so a lot of our food is not nutrient dense. It is just junk. So i was in korea a few weeks ago, sharing the film with the korean conference, the big thing for the planet, and 2400 soil scientists are there, with cuban pants, wonderful people there, so i was there, and the film was shown as a cultural centerpiece of the conference, which was really an honor, so what made me feel really good, because the film is collaborative, so you can brag about it. I was putting up a poster where it was showing, and so i am putting up the poster, and this woman walks by, and she says, are you deborah . And she said, i am dead were also. I am from brazil, and i teach soil science, and i use your film in our classes. It is great, and i said that is great. And another person said, are you deborah . And she was from europe, and she said, i use your film in classes, and she named all at least soil scientists, and i am, right on, and it is being shown at whole foods, because it is kind of like the next level, and my philosophy is smart enough. Do not dumb down. Give people information a way that they can take it in and feel empowered and get it, and then you think, yes, i get it therefore, i am going to eat organic, or i am not going to put that in my garden, or i am going to show this film at thanksgiving dinner next year so we can all be on the same page and understand it, because soil science is cutting edge, and if we change the way we do agriculture, not only is it healthy for our bodies and our planet, we can put a whole lot of carbon back in the soil, and that will help with global warming, and that will move towards soil conscious. We are all creatures of the soil, and we should treat the soil as if it is part of us, which, in fact, it is. Thank you. And speaking of soil and then, a perfect segue, because one of the things that you and moms all across the country have educated themselves and know what is going on, and they have seen it in their families and children, and one of the number one things with our soil is chemicals and what is going into the soil, so you are specifically around antigmo and what that means, so can you talk about the passion you have around that, and moms who are all around the country can hear this . Yes. Just to clarify, gmos are genetically engineered to withstand pesticide. It either is a pesticide, the pesticide is inside the food itself, or it is genetically engineered to withstand pesticides, so last year, there was an increase in roundup, which is the number one herbicide used in the world, and the active ingredient, glyphosate, you talk about taking, taking, taking, it actually takes from the soil. It is a chelator, which means it draws out the nutrients of any living thing it touches. It is indiscriminate, therefore causing vitamin deficiency and mineral deficiency of any living thing it touches. As a doctor said, it essentially gives a plant aims, so a normally harmless bacteria in the soil kills the lead, so what is it doing to our children, right, is our question, and glyphosate is being used millions of pounds per year, 500 Million Pounds around the world, and, in fact, they just dont use it on the soil before the crop is planted, and they dont just use it on gmos. They actually spray it as a drying agent on our rice, our sugar, our dry peas, the garbanzo beans. It is on your tea. It is on your stevia, and the levels are far above what has been shown to destroy gut bacteria in chickens. It is scientifically proven, and we allow on our food, three parts per million on seed potatoes, five parts per million on regular potatoes, four parts per million on the canola oils they cook with in the restaurants, and it is on the grains that the animals eat that we consume, and the soil is getting inundated with glyphosate. It is sprayed on gmos, on the soil, as a drying agent, and we are extremely concerned about the health risks for our children, and what were seeing now is that one out of to of our children has some sort of chronic illness. And this actually goes to the point of a vary highly respected researcher from m. I. T. , who just recently came out with some very alarming statistics, and she said at todays rate, by 2025, one out of two children will be autistic, and she is able to absolutely map glyphosate use and autism, and she has a chart that shows one on one exactly the use of that. And it is not just scientists. We have testimonials from hundreds of moms. Moms across america, we launched last february, and within months, we were reaching hundreds of thousands per week, and we have thousands of people who come to our website. And we have hundreds of testimonies about how their kids get better when they get off of gmos, and, for example, one woman found out about her son who was 11, and they went organic, and within weeks, they asked, do you have him on a new drug, and they said, no, we just have him on organic. He entered high school, and not one of his teachers could see that he was autistic, and we had another to had asthma, issues across the board. And one had astigmatism in his eyes. He no longer needs glasses, and the doctor said it mustve been there was some sort of inflammation, and she said, i know what the inflammation is. We moms know what is happening. Judi, please talk about what youre doing in the schools. You have so much reach, but now, you are doing something different, and you said this feels like the most important work of your life right now and when you are engaged in. Can you talk about that . Just sitting and listening to you allows me to know more about why we are doing what we are doing. Moms can attempt to take care of their children when they are not home, but they are in school a big chunk of their lives, and 16 years, at least, and they are being fed gmo food. A are being fed the worst food they possibly can, and everybody thinks that is ok, and what we are trying to do is mobilize campuses and encourage kids to fight the fight. One of the things we dreamed was a nongmo pantry, and the goal of that was to show chefs on campuses and in restaurants the differences they can make just by eliminating foreign, soy, canola, and transferring it to what it means to be, nongmo, and that can illuminate about 90 of the impacts we are having, but i think part of what we all have to do as responsible citizens, and i think especially moms, if we have to fight the fight in our schools, and we cannot hear that we cannot do this. We are killing off our kids. We are killing off the next generation. We are in pairing their ability to have children, and i think if each of us is responsible citizens, it really works in the sphere, whether it is in the local schools or the local communities, stopping this being sprayed in our parks and everywhere else, then we are reducing the impacts that our kids are feeling, and for us personally, if we change the way we are feeding our children, and we did it this year for 150 kids in our school, but the most underserved, the kids eating the worst food three meals a day, so i personally wanted to start there, because he can make a difference, and in all of our communities, there are populations that look like that, and what is our responsibility as citizens in the community to take care of these kids . And it has been interesting, because our whole career, we typically work with wealthier white people, and people are always saying, why arent you working with the underserved populations, and my response is that were all underserved. When it comes to these issues, nobody is not underserved. I think the opportunity to know that you can affect change, and now my opportunity to stand in front of people and say you can do this in your schools, you can do it within budget, you can do it within usda guidelines, you can do it in public schools, you do not have to do it in private schools is a really important next step for us, so we can all go back to the superintendents and leaders of School Districts and say stop, and i think more of this information, deborah is talking about soil, the most vital piece of our lives, and we are talking about the autism rates, who is going to take care of all of these kids with autism . Who is going to school them . And the externalities, what we are paying at the end of the day, we might not be spending the money now, but we will so spend it later, and it is getting worse, and for me, the food is the core issue and the seminal issue in our lives, and we all look back, and that is what we try to do everyday. How important this is, there are actually 31 million gmo meals that are served every day in our schools, so what judi is doing is just crucial just to the integrity of our entire culture and the survival of our culture, so we are going to b