food policy

Obama Just Gave a Big Speech on Food Policy

Ready to give Trump advice on cooking steak. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama has spent most of his post–White House time low-key chilling, but today he made his first speech to an international audience since exiting the White House, and it was at Seeds & Chips, an annual summit that looks at the intersection of food and technology (so think computer chips, not Lay’s). The gist of his hour-and-a-half-long keynote, which also featured Obama’s former chef and food-tech guru Sam Kass, was about tackling climate change so that Earth has sustainable food supplies in the future. “Even if every country somehow puts the breaks on the emissions that exist today, climate change would still have impact on our world for years to come … We’ve already seen shrinking yields and spiking food prices that in some cases are leading to political instability,” he said. (Cue background shot of Venezuela.)

The full speech is above, but assuming you don’t have 90 minutes to spare, the best Cliffs Notes version may be the official Seeds & Chips Twitter account’s live tweets — which distilled the talk down to a series of pithy Obamaisms that are pretty easy to sort topically:

1. Addressing the planet’s food-waste problem:

2. Food’s many complex layers:

3. Food’s power in society:

4. The importance of tech in food production:

5. How Michelle accomplished so much with Let’s Move!:

6. And his feelings about President Trump’s immigration policies:

Obama Just Gave a Big Speech on Food Policy