Sweet Farm believes in a “progress over perfection” approach in which they strive to inspire and educate a wide audience to make a change towards more compassionate and sustainable alternatives. Sweet Farm supports new technologies that have the potential to change the game and scale sustainable solutions and alternatives that benefit the planet and the animals.

Our key note speaker: Cory Booker

Senator Cory Booker, our keynote speaker, serves on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.  In 2021, Senator Booker reintroduced the Farm System Reform Act to crack down on monopolist practices and invest billions in the transition to a more resilient food system.

Senator Booker acknowledged that our food system is tragically broken. He believes that we are moving towards an environmental crisis, a health crisis, a biodiversity crisis, just by what we're doing through our agricultural practices.

Farm animals are treated as widgets in a large factory farm machine, and billions of them are treated with immense cruelty. The food system is also failing independent family farmers and ranchers, who are being squeezed from all sides by anti-competitive practices. And we’re failing the planet by using pesticides, some of which have been banned in Europe.

In response to the recent public health crisis of COVID-19, scientists and public health professionals are telling us in unmistakably clear terms there’s a serious risk that a factory farm in the U.S. could be the source of the next pandemic.

On top of that, poor nutrition is the leading cause of poor health in the U.S., and it kills about half a million Americans each year. One in three dollars in the federal budget goes to healthcare.  But no one wants to talk about the cause of this crisis.

Senator Booker shared that he made reforming our food system his top priority in the Senate. “Lives are depending upon what we do in this movement. We are in a crisis, but we cannot in any way let ourselves send into despair or surrender to cynicism. We have the capacity to change this, and we are a few in numbers nationally, but we're growing this consciousness of our country.”

Senator Booker took questions from a wide variety of attendees (a small farmer, a plant based entrepreneur and a college student among others), which led to valuable discussion and insights.

We’re thankful for all who participated and contributed to this amazing event and we can’t wait to see you at the next edition of the Humane Planet Speaker Series!

The second edition of the Humane Planet Speaker Series kicked off with a tour of Sweet Farm. A climate sanctuary in upstate New York, that is focused on driving change towards a more compassionate and sustainable world.

Sweet Farm’s co-founder Nate Salpeter introduced us to Sweet Farm’s mission and we met some of their amazing animal ambassadors, who represent the 70 billion land animals in our food system world wide.