Zero Foodprint Co-Founder On A Restaurant’s Role In Combatting Climate Change
Business Lunch
Restauranteurs cannot ignore the intimate link between food production and climate change. As the consequences of global warming become increasingly present across our cities and countrysides, a number of individuals are taking responsibility. One leading example is the acclaimed chef, restaurateur, author, consultant and now activist Anthony Myint, whose work at Zero Foodprint has earned him numerous accolades including the Humanitarian of the Year Award by the James Beard Foundation in 2020 and the Basque Culinary World Prize the year prior. Myint’s approach is simple: a one-percent surcharge added to the dining bills of restaurant partners, which is then applied to a number of grants offered to farmers implementing regenerative farming practices.
Zero Foodprint is in use at a number of the world’s leading restaurants, including Noma (Denmark), Chez Panisse (California) and one of my personal favorites, Mission/Mission Chinese Food (New York/California), where Anthony is also a co-founder. I caught up with him to learn more about his mission, how restaurants can play a significant role, and what’s on the horizon.
SS: Briefly, tell us about Zero Foodprint?
ZFP leads public-private collaborations with regional governments in CA and Colorado to scale regenerative agriculture and food related climate solutions. The approach goes beyond sourcing and food waste, and involves working with local soil scientists and conservation experts to enable chefs and diners to directly help farmers shift toward climate beneficial farming. This costs only a few cents per meal, but can add up into real change, and is modeled on the rapid and systematic transition underway in renewable energy. ZFP is making it possible to "improve the grid" of food and farming by letting consumers directly vote with their dollar for healthy soil by directly funding compost application, cover crop planting and improved grazing.
SS: When did you realize that restaurants could be part of the solution towards climate change?
The restaurant industry is massive. Pre-COVID it was $863B/year--bigger than retail or Ag. And food service included one out of ten workers in the US. And I think in the past few years scientists, like at Drawdown.org have determined that improving food systems and land use represent the largest climate solution. What's really powerful is that they also found that solving the climate crisis comes down to whether or not society can mobilize just 1% of GDP towards solutions. So the research suggests that shift in the economy would be sufficient to lower global temperatures and solve the entire crisis. The challenge of course is that structural change will require a cultural shift and that's where both the cultural and fiscal capital of the restaurant industry can play a major role.
SS: What learnings have you drawn from your work as a chef that have been applied to improving a restaurants involvement in reducing their carbon footprint?
We ran The Perennial, which Bon Appetit called The Most Sustainable Restaurant in America. This interview would get too long if I told you about everything we were working on! But the reality is that while it was admirable, it wasn't scalable. Ingredients--the growing of the food--was the largest portion of the foodprint (about 70%) and even if operators tried to improve their sourcing there is A) very little supply of regenerative ingredients and B) supporting a good producer doesn't necessarily create change on acres. So Zero Foodprint is closing that loop and making it possible for a consumer to choose to directly improve acres.
SS: What is carbon farming and why is it important?
Carbon Farming or Regenerative Agriculture is basically faming with nature and fostering biology instead of solely chemistry. It refers to a range of good old fashioned, agroecological and indigenous practices like compost application, planting cover crops and reducing tillage. Some research organizations like The Rodale Institute estimate that carbon farming could remove 55 Billion tons of emissions from the atmosphere per year (for reference, global emissions are ~38B tons.
SS: How have you worked to raise restaurants and farmers interest in regenerative agriculture? What have the challenges been?
Chefs have supported great land stewards for years through the Farm to Table movement. The challenge is that "buying the good stuff" then hits a wall. We hope acres change, but it's not that simple. And even something as pervasive as the Organic movement, represents only 1-2% of US or global acres after 50 years. So the challenge is to find a more effective way to enable a transition to improved land stewardship. Our collaborations with regional governments has informed our approach to overcoming this challenge and so we are beginning a Table to Farm movement where a few cents per purchase can go directly into this change.
SS: As Zero Foodprint works with restaurants to improve their sustainability record, how can they measure their progress?
This gets back to the theory of change, so to speak. And so we spent our life savings and years trying to elevate sustainability to a virtue that consumers want to support. And there are many organizations like B-Corp, etc. But we have shifted our thinking from a purity contest and a few high integrity operators deciding to align their operation with their values (within and in competition with a fundamentally 100% extractive economy), a regenerative food economy with just a very modest investment in soil health.
SS: Lastly, What are the biggest priorities and opportunities for Zero Foodprint in 2021?
ZFP just expanded to CO in April and will be expanding to GA and the Northeast in the coming months. We also just launched international affiliates in the Nordic region and Asia with plans to collaborate with folks in Germany as well. My hope is that as society starts to understand regenerative agriculture and healthy soil, they will seek ways to scale those solutions--not just supporting the very small number of regenerative producers, but rather to send a few cents per purchase to actively create a sustainable food system.
You can learn more about Zero Foodprint here.