By Alex Buchholz

Last Monday, April 18, 2016, students, faculty and staff gathered in Eisner & Lubin Auditorium for NYU’s annual Fair Food Fest. The event, hosted by Real Food Challenge at NYU, commenced at 7pm with a keynote panel, moderated by leader of Real Food Challenge at NYU, Natalie Petrulla, which included speakers Marion Nestle, of NYU Steinhardt’s Food Studies department; Nadia Johnson, Policy and Advocacy Director/Farmers’ Market Network Manager at Just Food; George Reis, Supervisor of Landscaping at NYU; and Mike Hollis, Urban Farms Manager at Services for the UnderServed — all experts in their fields. The discussion revolved around the subject of urban agriculture and its future. I was particularly intrigued by the interactivity that held the diverse panel together — it seemed as if the four panelists worked together to construct a vivid image of our current and future states of agriculture. Attendee sat quietly, their attentions captured. During the open Q&A session, hands shot up like May flowers with questions ranging in topics from nutrition to federal government funding for fair food and hunger relief programs. Read more