Laura Zaks ’99 is an international food security specialist with expertise in the intersection of agriculture, climate, economic development, nutrition, and public health. She is the associate director of communications and development for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in Washington, DC.
Hello Laura! Would you tell me about your path into working in food security?
It’s been a long journey, when I was at Wesleyan I didn’t know that I wanted to work in food security. I was more interested in broader issues surrounding economic development and community development, but wasn’t really sure how I would work in that space.
I had a period of trial and error. I was actually a College of Letters major and was originally focused on humanities. I really loved history and thought about law school, but because I had studied languages, I was also interested in working abroad. I ended up traveling to Panama, and working there for two years.
Being in a tropical country and in a space where people are much more connected to their food system, I learned a lot about how food security plays into the broader picture of economic development. I didn’t enter this work from an environmental science background, whereas a lot of my colleagues took that traditional route. I instead went to graduate school, and I studied Economic and Political development in the School of International Affairs at Columbia. That was really what solidified my interest in food and agriculture. Although the program I was in was not a specific food and agriculture program, I took a lot of development economics courses and an agricultural economics course that I really loved.
I feel like the job trajectory for me was somewhat accidental; I just found one experience that seemed great and then went to the next one, the next one, it kind of snowballed. I came at it more from working in international policy.
Would you share more about your graduate program at Columbia?
During my graduate program I did a capstone project that involved working with the landless workers movement in Brazil. I conducted a feasibility study, looking at whether or not they could take surpluses that they were producing and move them into either organic certification or fair trade markets, and use that as a way to leverage income for their communities.
We did an assessment of what it would entail to get certified and what that would mean politically for them. We also considered how it aligned with their values. That was a really interesting experience, getting to go to Brazil and living with farmers. Doing that research project was really impactful for me.
I always felt like among the issues that I had worked on and in the social justice world, I was drawn to learning about hunger and nutrition. I am interested in how communities can think about sustaining themselves independently, and what resources they have access to and why.
What other impactful career experiences have you had, prior to your current role?
I worked for a bunch of different NGOs over time, working my way into food systems. I worked in public health for almost five years for an organization that was focused on providing technical assistance to clinics and health organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
From there, I went and worked for an organization that was a startup focused on sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation in Panama. I had a split role, as their director of development. I was doing all the fundraising with their board in New York city and I was writing grants both to private foundations in the U.S. but also to the Panamanian government. It’s grown into a really amazing project that does a lot of community based work now, and they have mostly local staff in Panama. They’re called the Esguero Eco Foundation! Working in that role I brought more general skills in the nonprofit world into working specifically in sustainable agriculture.
I also went to Costa Rica for three years! I worked at the International Institute for Cooperation in agriculture, which is essentially like the UN system, but exclusively for the Americas. I worked in the EECA, which is based in San Jose, and we worked on agricultural projects throughout the region. After that, I came back to the U S and pivoted to working domestically in food systems. I think the pandemic definitely drove home that there were just so many food system issues going on internally.
Do you have any advice for students interested in working, researching, or studying internationally?
It’s so hard to generalize, but I think that although graduate school can be one route, it is very expensive. It’s not the same as undergrad, where the degree you get doesn’t have to be specialized, because you are learning skills like how to express your ideas clearly, think critically, write, read, and synthesize information regardless of your major. The decision to go to grad school is different and should be weighed carefully.
I think that getting field work is always an amazing route, and way easier to do when you’re younger and have less long term like life responsibilities.
What I did was I researched a ton of places internationally to work and most of them said I could volunteer in exchange for room and board. I eventually found one job that was a paid position, and I took the risk to go for it, and quit my job in New York City. Working abroad you gain a lot of perspective and professional contacts. I learned so many lessons. I became so interested in environmental issues by seeing what was going on in other countries and comparing it to home. Eventually I asked myself; why don’t I try to fix the problems here before I try to work on issues abroad.
Do you have any advice for deciding whether or not to go to grad school?
Once you commit to graduate school, you may face a large financial burden, and loans. My advice is to understand what you want from your career path and consider if the degree is really going to be something that’s going to help you get there? It is not a great option to just go to have more time to figure out what you want to do; I would not encourage someone to go to graduate school for those reasons.
I really liked my program for graduate school. It opened a lot of doors. I think any kind of graduate program, a lot of what it’s giving you is a strong professional network.
What is it like working in environmental communications, for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition?
I like it a lot because I feel I have this interesting role of being a translator, taking complex policy concepts and making it more tangible to various audiences.
I’m part of a small organization called the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. We go by the acronym NSAC. We have two teams and I support both of them in my role. One team is our policy team and they are studying federal legislation data, and sort of making recommendations to political partners on the Hill. Often these partners are Senate staffers who are working on food and agriculture, and we’re giving them policy recommendations.
The other side of our team is the grassroots team, which is membership based. We’re representing 150 or more organizations across the country that pay dues to us and they pay dues to us so that we are sitting in DC representing them. Our grassroots team is collaborating with them constantly and asking questions like, what are the policy priorities here? What are the kinds of issues that are emergent in the field? Like what are farmers seeing? Currently, we are intensely focused on the farm bill.
The farm bill is a massive piece of legislation rewritten every five years. It last passed in 2018 and includes a broad range of programs funded by congressional appropriations and the president’s budget. It covers areas like crop insurance and nutrition programs like SNAP. Some of our partners are working on land access issues.
The way the system is written now, a lot of the programs that the federal government is spending taxpayer money on in the end don’t benefit the farmers that really needed that support the most. The funding mostly goes to large consolidated companies. It’s hard to even call them farms after a certain point because they’re really like corporations that have the capacity to apply to federal grants to access this money. The farm bill is a critical opportunity to push for reforms that make these programs more effective for small-scale and family farmers.
Learn more about the National Sustainable Agriculture Commission!
About NSAC
NSAC members
What is the Farm Bill?
NSAC’s Farm Bill Platform – ie – what we had hoped to get in a new farm bill
Big news from this week and last regarding the current process of drafting and eventually passing a new FB into law:
House draft
Senate draft
Our jobs page – which also lists jobs from our members and sometimes our funders, etc. which might be helpful to any recent Wes grads looking to get into the food movement!
How do you balance your responsibilities?
My role is split between communications and fundraising. I’ve had roles where I did one or the other, and the benefit of focusing on one area is clear. However, in my current role, I manage communications half the time for an organization with substantial communications needs; I manage our website content, blog, social media, and newsletter. For the farm bill, we publish analyses on new bills and federal programs.
We maintain a blog where we publish weekly analyses on congressional bills and USDA programs. I edit and publish these articles, manage our social media, and produce our newsletter, which is read by many Hill staff. We are also heavily involved in press work, fielding calls from the DC ag press and broader media. We provide insights on appropriations and explain federal budget impacts on food systems and programs like SNAP.
Fundraising is primarily institutional. We work with foundations that have funded us year after year. My job involves meeting reporting deadlines, filling out proposals, and finding new funding partners as foundations change their focus. This also includes prospecting for new partners and maintaining existing relationships to support our work.
What is the most rewarding part of the work you do?
The rewarding part is to see the changes that do happen over time. Like there are big wins that NSAC has been able to achieve over time, programs that they’ve helped design and create that now are like established within what USDA offers.
I think the network of groups that we work with is also really inspiring. The fact that we have these 150 plus member groups throughout the country and we get to meet with them twice a year, I think the inspiring work that they’re doing on the ground to really support their local food communities is what keeps me working, even though it can be pretty discouraging because of the political environment. You have to keep going back to those farmer stories about how a grant really turned their business around or how, you know, their family struggled over generations to kind of keep their farm business going and what it means to them to be expanding and growing their livelihood. In our communications work, we’re heavily trying to kind of elevate the voices of the people most impacted at the front lines of climate change.
In the climate fight, the food piece is taken longer to get public traction. There is so much to say about the U. S. food system and its impact, not just here, but abroad, with the export of processed food. Food waste is a huge issue in the U. S. on the consumer side. Whereas in less industrialized countries, it tends to appear frim post harvest loss, iIn the U. S. we’re notoriously bad, with buying too much, throwing out too much. That’s what helps drive me, how we’ve gotten so out of control, and I feel like there are so many pieces involved in food justice that need addressing. There’s a historical legacy of how these problems have especially impacted people of color, built into how our country and economy were designed. There are so many cases of fpeople excluded from being able to generate wealth, to own land, and to produce food thats nourishing and healthy and culturally relevant.
Do you have any advice for students graduating soon, and considering next steps?
My main piece of advice is to talk to as many people as you can. I did a lot of informational interviews with people in the Wesleyan network, it was helpful in understanding what kinds of jons are out there. Speak to people who work in areas you are interested in.
If you are interested in food and food justice and understanding how food systems work, go out and learn how to grow food, whether that’s your garden plot or a farm you can volunteer for. There is nothing like understanding just how hard it is to produce healthy food. I really think that’s life changing, even for people who don’t want to work in food justice. If we all did this, I think we all would have an understanding of what farmers face and how much we take it for granted.
The NSEC network is large, we have members in almost every state. They are amazing organizations and nonprofits that are supporting people across the supply chain, from helping farmers, to getting their food to markets, to helping them figure out better ways to market products.If you can get involved and support them, sign up for their newsletters, get their action alerts, and understand what that landscape looks like is really important because we all consume food, and have a stake in these systems.