It's All About the Food System: A Waterside Chat with Justin Zeulner of The Wave Foundation

The Wave Foundation Founder and President Justin Zeulner joined host Tom Sadler for a Waterside Chat on February 28, 2023, about The Wave's large-scale approaches to food programs around equity, environmental stewardship, diversity and resilience, with an emphasis on local production and healthy communities.
The organization's big goals involve systemic change in the ways we feed ourselves as a society, but The Wave pivoted during Covid to providing services in the Pacific Northwest, particularly to rural and tribal communities not being effectively served by food banks and other traditional interventions. The Wave distributed eight million pounds of healthy, sustainably grown and culturally appropriate food in two years of the pandemic, including food boxes based around Alaska salmon or tribal-caught Columbia River salmon and filled out with other products grown locally in the Northwest.
The food box program and The Wave's work to introduce locally and sustainably grown ingredients to sports arenas and other large public venues have had ripple effects, since a commitment to purchase allowed farmers to invest in capacity and grow their operations. Learn more about how Justin's time as a pioneering snowboarder sparked his interest in conservation, and how his experience with Paul Allen and the Green Sports Alliance helped The Wave come together.
The Marine Fish Conservation Network’s Waterside Chat series connects people who depend on healthy oceans and fisheries with the issues that directly affect them and their communities. Each episode the Network’s Deputy Director Tom Sadler talks with different guests about ocean policy and fisheries management topics. He engages them in genuine and thoughtful conversations about what policy decisions mean for people’s livelihoods, communities, recreation, and coastal ways of life.

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