I'm in San Francisco because of the energy, the ideas, and the fact that this is a great place for me to land. When I'm traveling and working nationally, I love coming back here.

What makes the farmers market such a special place is that you are actually creating community around food.

I think that if everyone did at least embrace a more plant-centered diet, it would improve public health.

In terms of the contemporary food system we see a lot of racism currently. Obviously we have a large supply of food. A lot of people don't examine why that is the case, but there are a number of nonwhite migrant workers being exploited every day.

Given that I'm from the South, I wanted to do something to address that. I have been focusing more energy and resources on addressing those issues.

Because we're becoming such an urban nation, we're going to need to be producing so much more food in cities. These institutions have members, obviously. They have the resources to start projects like urban farms and gardens, teaching tools, and the ability to educate their members so that they can then go home and start their own urban gardens. I just really think that faith-based institutions can take the lead in creating community-based food systems, and I'd really like to see that happen.

I think there needs to be a general consciousness raising among consumers. So many consumers aren't aware of the backstory. They see the end product in the supermarket but don't know all the steps that it took to get it there, who helped to get the food there.