Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Lesli Hoey appeared on the Michigan Minds podcast to speak about issues of sustainability in food production. “Our food system right now is interesting because it can actually produce enough food to support about 9 billion people, and we only have about 7.6 billion people on the planet,” Hoey said. She explained that the current food system produces large amounts of greenhouse gases, and the the scale of large industrial farms makes it difficult for small and mid-sized farmers to compete. Hoey, whose work focuses on the intersection of food policy advocacy, planning, implementation, and evaluation, suggests a holistic approach to studying ways to make food production more sustainable. Her comments were based off of a paper that she and a wider group of faculty involved in U-M’s Sustainable Food Systems Initiative recently published on the same topic.

Michigan Minds is a series from U-M’s Office of Public Engagement that promotes the thought leadership of the University’s faculty across disciplines. Listen to the podcast here, or view a video interview produced by Michigan Minds.