Giving Compass' Take:

• Hollywood producer Jacob Pechenik and his wife, actress Zooey Deschanel, started The Farm Project and Lettuce Grow to bring people closer to farms and produce, and place hydroponic farms in backyards across the country.

• How can funders help expand research on fresh and local food and nutrition?

• Learn more about finding farmland in our backyards. 

On “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Jacob Pechenik—a former Hollywood producer and co-founder of The Farm Project and Lettuce Grow—talks about the roles celebrities can play in creating a better food system for everyone. “We need to deliver a really important message in a bite-sized portion in a really entertaining way,” says Pechenik. “We can make [growing food] fun and accessible, not doom and gloom. People need to feel positive about what they’re doing.”

Partnering with his wife Zooey Deschanel, Pechenik started The Farm Project which uses media and technology to educate people about where their food is grown—and empowers people to start asking questions about how food affects the world. “If consumers start asking questions about where their food comes from, all of a sudden our food is going to change for the better,” says Pechenik.

Read the full article on The Farm Project by Katherine Walla at Food Tank.