José Andrés: Food as a tool of war and peace

Chef José Andrés: Food as a weapon is something every single democracy in the world cannot allow.

NIALA: José Andrés built a team of food first-responders when he founded his nonprofit World Central Kitchen, providing meals immediately following natural disasters.

Today: he's on the ground in war zones.

NIALA: Food as a tool of war…and peace. I'm Niala Boodhoo. From Axios… this…is one big thing.

INTRO:

José Andrés has become a recognized figure on the scene in the aftermath of global disasters. The chef-turned-humanitarian traveled to Haiti more than a decade ago to cook food for victims of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Now, his World Central Kitchen team is working in partnership with local restaurants and nonprofits to feed people after all kinds of crises - including those that are man-made.

Here's some of that by the numbers:

In 13 years, World Central Kitchen has served more than 300 million meals around the globe, including more than 200 million to those affected by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in the first year of that war. In the first two weeks of the Hamas-Israel war this fall - 1.4 million meals and food kits were distributed in Gaza, and 200,000 meals in Israel.

So how does one man lead an emergency response organization when the emergencies keep coming – and keep shifting?

José Andrés is a chef and founder of World Central Kitchen – José, welcome to 1 big thing.

Chef José Andrés: Thank you for having me.

Niala: We are seeing food used as a weapon in at least two modern conflicts today including Ukraine and Gaza. How has that changed the work that you do? I should add - you're joining us from Apaculco just after Category 5 Hurricane Otis hit.

Chef José Andrés: Yeah, I'm in Acapulco right now and, in a way, it's exactly the same. It's some situation that takes food away from the people. But sometimes, in war food is being used to impose your power, that can leave millions, children, elderly, women, pregnant women, without food because somebody is using food to make a point or to try to win a war. I always thought that World Central Kitchen is organization that will be there in natural disasters providing food and water.

But now I realize we are going to have to keep learning, in how we are going to do these, in these kind of situations, in these kinds of events where war happens, a hurricane, well, we keep going. But when you see that the human is making a decision and families are trying to feed themselves. Like I saw in Irpin, uh, that we saw the images of a woman in the floor with a shot in the back of her head with a piece of bread, half a meter away from her hand, there you say, what's wrong with the few? And how the good will of the many can win against the darkness of a few?

Niala: Unfortunately, as you said, I mean, we've heard Russian officials literally say we are using food as a silent weapon. You said you are learning with World Central Kitchen how to kind of adapt to that reality. What kind of things have you learned?

Chef José Andrés: Well, what we see in Russia was two types of food issues. One, millions and millions of Ukrainians becoming displaced inside their own country. Or becoming refugees, leaving the horrors of the war and Ukraine behind. When that happens, infrastructure breaks. Because who, who is working in the supermarkets? Who is working in the factories? Who is working on the farms? Well, we went to make sure that we did a short-term bridge of creating infrastructure systems to make sure that food will keep flowing to the places that need it. It's always about distribution.

And what war does is breaks distribution. But that was easy to solve. Why? Because we put restaurants that were closing, but hey, let's open and use those same restaurants that in times of good feed the few, to have the kitchens that became community kitchens, that in times of war feed the many.

But at the same time in the rural areas, they could cook. And we brought bags of food where there was not anywhere to buy the food anymore. And we gave them seeds. A little investment, you give them 10, 12 different types of seeds, allows them through spring and summer to produce plenty of potatoes and onions and carrots to feed a family of four and maybe have some extra to sell on the side of the street so they can make some income.

Niala: So, let me understand -- you went from distributing meals and food to people to also distributing seeds so that people could grow food and feed themselves?

Chef José Andrés: More than 150,000 families, which meant 150 mini farms in front of the house of every Ukrainian farmer, especially around the front lines. And I will say the farmers, many died, unfortunately, because in the process of taking care of the lands, the mines, the vast majority of them are left by the Russians, their tractors will explode with a simple thing of trying to plant seeds, or trying to recollect. And all of a sudden you see that indirectly the farmers are fighting this war, because obviously they are trying to make a living.

So if somebody has a big interest into destabilizing the world, like I do believe President Putin and Russia is doing actively, the more we destabilize food production.

Millions, if not hundreds of millions, will suffer. And then what the rich countries of the world are going to do when we have those moms with their children in their arms knocking at the door and saying, the only thing is I want to feed my children? That's why it's imperative that we stop wars.

And using food as a weapon is something that nobody can ever allow again, but unfortunately it keeps happening.

Niala: José, you mentioned farmers in Ukraine who have died. Certainly among the many civilian deaths have been people working with World Central Kitchen who have died in these war zones. How do you factor safety into the work that you're doing with your partners?

Chef José Andrés: The safest thing is not to show up. My daughter Inés, she came with me to Ukraine in the early days of the war, a few days, in between university, free time. And I told her I didn't want her to come with me to Ukraine. I told her, you stay in Poland, we already have operations in Poland (laughs) And she told me something along the lines of, We're not going to be changing the world if we don't take some risks.

We lost six members of the volunteer team of World Central Kitchen inside Ukraine. I would never think this would be happening to me as the founder of our organization, that I will be losing people. And it's people that, yes, work in difficult places. and I wanted to stop even operations.

But the people told me, "José, we, we are here and we didn't leave because we are here helping our people. In this case, with World Central Kitchen support, we can do it better. But even if you go, José, we're going to keep doing it. And unfortunately, we may keep dying. So don't take it on your shoulders. Take it on the shoulders of the people killing us. We're gonna keep doing what we do."

And there is where you realize, like what we have in Gaza right now. We've been buying fish from the fishermen. We have, we bought fruits and vegetables from every single farmer that had any fruits and vegetables in their warehouses.

But what is amazing is that what I'm talking to you from the comfort of this chair is people that literally are cooking and recollecting foods and delivering food, when missiles are falling down, right and left. And this is the bravery of the people. Not only obviously, in Gaza, but in many other parts of the world, unknown heroes. They are the ones that really in fascinating ways gives me hope for humanity.

NIALA: In a moment, more with José Andrés, plus an update on food insecurity here at home… This is 1 big thing, from Axios.

NIALA: Welcome back to 1 big thing – I'm Niala Boodhoo. I've been talking to José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, about food as a tool of war…and how his organization responds to that reality.

Niala: Given everything that we've talked about, José, how do you decide with World Central Kitchen when to leave a place, or when they don't need you anymore?

Chef José Andres: When do we leave? We leave when, when we see that the restaurants are open, that we see that the banks are already open and the people can access their little savings.

When you see that the buses are already flowing across the communities and people can come and go. When you see, like in Mexico, the tortilla places open because the Mexican tortillas, for them, is life. This is the moment. So usually we try to go very quickly up and then we start going slowly down.

It's like a slow retreat in a good way. We don't want to take away from the local business, because we give free food. I don't want to take away from the local bodegas and supermarkets because we give free bags of food. We want things to go back to what it was.

Every place is different. Ukraine has been the longest, we are over 600 days.

So, you know, we, we, we listen to the people.

Niala: José, there has been some pushback against World Central Kitchen for drawing attention or resources away from smaller organizations or groups doing this work. How do you respond to that?

Chef José Andrés: You know, when I was in Puerto Rico, I had somebody that said that I was there to make money and to make myself famous. (Ha!)

And that same person, two hours later, had to go and apologize for the words. Because I have many ways to make money personally. I think I've done well as a business as well. I can be playing golf with my friends in Augusta when I'm in the middle of a hurricane.

I can be in a Formula One racing. And I'm right here in Acapulco, sleeping in places without water and just joining my teams. So what I'm telling you is, it's a lot of people that finger point at what's wrong. And I'm one of those sometimes. But I'm giving the solution of what can be better.

We're still learning. We're not perfect.

Niala: You are now, you're in so much a more visible role in global politics. And I feel like you've talked a lot about peace, and war. Do you still want people to call you a chef? Is that still your identity?

Chef José Andrés: Well, I want people to call me a cook. I don't, I don't know if I'm very good running a kitchen. I have chefs in my team better than me. What I am, you know, I connect the dots. I know a little bit of everything. I'm not very good at anything specific. But what I know is create teamwork and create the sense that we can use our hands to start making something happen.

I've seen here in Acapulco families that they're keeping open their tortilla machines and little businesses, not because they need to make a business even when they have a lot of mayhem in their own lives, but because they see the sense that their role is to keep pumping tortillas in every community.

Those people are unnoticed. But those people right now are doing God's work. Every one of those tortilla places that is open against a lot, you may think, oh, they're open because they're making money. No, they're opening because right now they're saving lives. That's the fact. And that's what I see every time I come to these, to these missions.

Niala: Kind of in the background of everything we've been talking about is climate change, which is making food insecurity worse around the world, not just in war zones or in places where there have been natural disasters.

I heard you quote your father before as saying, when he would invite people over for dinner saying, if more people come, we could just add more rice to the pot. But as the planet warms, what do we do if we can't grow more rice?

Chef José Andrés: My father, with that saying, I think he was always trying to say that big problems have very simple solutions. But I think here we have to be playing right now, defense, offense.

We produce more food than food we need, but we waste so much. But now imagine tomorrow, the one day we wake up and because we take food for granted and governments in the world, including the UN, don't have real food policies that are showing meaningful improvement,

All of a sudden planet earth may not be producing enough food to be feeding an ever growing planet. What happens then on top of the food waste we keep doing? All of a sudden, we will have the biggest mass migration in the history of humanity.

Because people will have to go anywhere they think is food. And I believe that food needs to be seen as a national security issue. I believe every president of every government should have a national food security advisor. I do believe like even CIA should be having a team of only experts on food. We know that many of the strategic geopolitical moves that every country are doing are in a way to control the food sources. China, it's 1.4 billion people, they are close to 20 percent of the world population, but they only have 7 percent of the farming land.

President Xi, he missed the G20 because he had the meeting with rice producers. Everybody forgets that the president of China understands food. He came from a rural area. He grew up poor.

Xi understands the value of food. I applaud him for this, but we know China is doing a lot of moves to control the food sources in different countries in Latin America and Africa because he wants to feed his people. I support them, but we need to make sure that food is not going to become another way to start new wars in the years to come.

And I told you defense and offense. Everybody is promising everything in the UN, and in the moment they leave the UN building, those promises are going in the air.

When I open a restaurant, I say, I'm opening a restaurant and I commit money. If you're going to say we're going to fight climate change, what money are you putting?

When I told you we need to play also, uh, offense, I am behind any organization, any company that wants to learn how to produce food with less water and using less land. The proteins of the future that will be done in labs like you make beer, like chicken or like salmon.

I'm going to be always behind those companies but until we don't have real leadership that puts their money where their promises are. I think this problem will get bigger before it's gonna get any smaller.

Niala: We started talking about just the darkness that you see, that you have seen in some of the places where you've worked, but you've also talked about the moments of hope. How do you balance that? How do you keep going?

Chef José Andrés: Sometimes for me, I don't know if it is, uh, better, to show the moments I, I cry or I may feel a little bit down.

Niala: Yeah, do you cry a lot?

Chef José Andrés: Uh, sometimes. Yeah, I'm the type of crying baby when I watch good movies. I'm very sensitive to life. And that's why maybe I like to be next to those moments. So, you can never feel what others are suffering, but at least you can get close enough and you can get a glimpse.

So, you know, me, I keep nurturing and I'm feeding my soul, just watching the amazing people, doing the impossible. And at the end, food is an amazing, powerful tool of goodness. to fight climate change, to bring peace to the world, to create jobs, to fight malnutrition and to fight hunger and food at the end is at the heart of everything we are. That's why for me I will tell everybody I have my right to be everywhere feeding everybody.

And what is good for me and my children must be good for others and I will fight to achieve that too.

Niala: José Andrés is a cook and founder of World Central Kitchen. Thank you so much, José. Please stay safe. I hope we can stay in touch.

Chef José Andrés: Thank you, Niala.

Chef José Andrés: Did I pronounce your name right?

Niala (laughs): You can call me Ne-alla. It's fine.

Chef José Andrés: Oh, shit, I f**ked it up again.

Ciao. Ciao. Ciao.

– beat –

NIALA: José Andrés said every government should have a national food security advisor.

Well with that in mind, Axios Market's Emily Peck explains that here in the U.S., the high level of food insecurity might be getting overlooked right now as reports of a great economy continue.

In 2022, the share of households defined as food insecure rose to nearly 13 percent from 10 percent in 2021.

Emily Peck: In families with children, these numbers were even worse. An additional 4.1 million kids were living in homes that were food insecure last year. And what food insecurity means is that at times during the year a family or household can't buy an adequate amount of food for one or more of its members.

In families with kids, oftentimes this'll mean that parents will skip meals so children can eat, or a household relies on only a very few basic foods and reduces variety in its diet. There are significant racial disparities here too that are very disturbing. 22 percent of black households were food insecure, 21 percent of Hispanic households. Among families with very young children, the numbers were higher. For households with single mothers, about one third reported food insecurity. So, yeah, these numbers were worse in 2022 than the year before, even though the economy was doing much better.

So what's going on? Inflation. Basically, food prices increased more than 10 percent in 2022. And at the same time, it wasn't just food prices going up, it was everything. Rents increased, the price of gas or just to heat your home went up.

And when times are tight, sad to say, it's easy to cut back on food. If you don't pay your rent, you don't pay your mortgage, you eventually you lose your home. If you don't put gas in your car, you can't get to work. Food is a place where you can skimp, you can tighten the belt, one advocate told me.

Now, there's reason to believe these numbers are going to look worse this year. Yes, inflation has eased, but food prices are still very high. And, for people who aren't dealing with this, it might come as a surprise. You know on the markets team, we've been reporting strong economic numbers on unemployment, on GDP, but these food insecurity numbers are a reminder that what the economy, quote unquote, means is very different for different people.

And even when it appears to be going great, there are Americans going hungry.

NIALA: That's Axios Markets' Emily Peck.

And - that does it for our very first edition of 1 Big Thing. You can always send feedback by texting me at 202 918 4893 - or emailing podcasts @ axios.com.

The 1 Big Thing team includes Supervising Producer Alexandra Botti and Sound Engineer Alex Suigara, who also composed our theme music. Aja Whitaker-Moore is Axios' Executive Editor - and Sara Keuhalani Goo is Axios' Editor in Chief.

Special thanks to Axios's Mike Allen and Stef Kight for their help with this episode.

I'm Niala Boodhoo. Thanks for listening - stay safe - and we'll be back with you next Thursday.