2022 National Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health

• "Reduce poverty as an integral step to reducing hunger"

• "Create more accessible and affordable food production and distribution systems"

• "Address the impacts of climate change and improve market competition to ensure long-term food sustainability for all"

Indigenous Knowledge

• Jennifer Grenz, Leader the Indigenous Ecology Lab, encourages referring "to land stewardship and community knowledge to inform solutions of our food systems [and] looking for opportunities for innovation at the local community level-focusing on collective well-being".

• "It's not about letting government off the hook when we characterize it as slow. Our communities have suffered for many, many years waiting for the government to do something. And so I think it's about empowering ourselves to do something in the meantime".

• It is essential that in our journey forward, we engage multiple perspectives while sharing knowledge with one another and encouraging collective action

• The government has demonstrated throughout history that it will not act to prioritize the well-being and human rights of all of its citizens unless it is convenient for them or they are being pressured by the public through protests and increased awareness of the problems

Taking Into Account the Ideas and Psychologies of Those Suffering from Food Insecurity

• Patrick Webb, Director of USAID's Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lan and former Chief of Nutrition for the UN's World Food Program advises, "In all my years of working on food insecurity with Indigenous or peoples around the world, the things that I come away with are uncertainty, pain, shame, and fear. It's not just the hunger dimension. It's the things that wrap around hunger that make the experience of food insecurity so damaging at the individual household community level"

• It is highly improbable that inclusive and lasting change will come to fruition if those in power who are structuring these changes do not engage and directly collaborate with impacted communities. There are no substitutes to lived experiences or personal stakes in a cause.

Sustainability and Mitigating Climate Impacts

• The Center for American Progress explains, "providing equitable and long-term access to food also requires a production system that is resilient and innovative in the face of future changes. This means adapting food production to meet the realities of a changing climate, a reduced dependence on fossil fuels in production and transportation, and a reversal of trends toward consolidation across the sector."

• Over the past century, agricultural production has boomed, yet this exponential increase is not sustainable, and is already causing detrimental effects such as increased food prices in response to climate-change driven droughts

• "Achieving national commitments to reduce emissions and address climate change would have significant implications for maintaining food security. There are also sector-specific opportunities to decouple current levels of food production from fossil fuel-derived inputs and make production systems more resilient to climate change. The agriculture sector is responsible for approximately 10 percent of annual emissions in the United States, and agricultural land also has the potential to sequester atmospheric carbon. Strategies that would make the food system more resilient to climate change and resilient to fossil fuel-driven price fluctuations include investing in decarbonization throughout the food production system—including inputs, harvesting, processing, and distribution—and offering technical assistance and incentives to agricultural producers that scale up climate-smart agricultural practices and conservation and restoration of nature to increase long-term sequestration and storage of carbon."

Food insecurity, The Center for American Progress argues, is a Symptom of older, broader, and institutional inequalities. They write, "although policymakers can make specific choices to address hunger, effective anti-hunger strategies must be centered in addressing the economic conditions that lead to hunger and reforming the policies that create systematic barriers".