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Olivia B

Mar 12, 2025

7

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Women's History Month 2025: Five Women Who Shaped Our Food Systems

For Women’s History Month, we’d like to honor five women who changed the world through food systems, agriculture, and innovation.

Women's History Month 2025: Five Women Who Shaped Our Food Systems

Dr. Maria Andrade shows off her biofortified sweet potatoes.


As we celebrate pioneering women across all industries and fields this Women’s History Month, we would like to acknowledge those who helped create the agricultural world as we know it. From Victorian citizen scientists spearheading ecology from their gardens to modern lawmakers directing government food policy, women have shaped our understanding of sustainability, agricultural science, and conservation throughout history. Here are five of the many whose hard work and knowledge suffuse our food systems to this day. 


Harriet Williams Russell Strong (1844-1926): The Walnut Queen of Whittier

Harriet Strong’s story was laced with adversity from the start. When her husband died by suicide following a chain of failed business ventures, 39-year-old Strong was left with four daughters to support, a mountain of debt, ongoing spinal issues, and a ranch in Whittier, California now threatened by foreclosure. Strong was not one to be cowed by the situation, however, and she quickly set about educating herself on soil, agriculture, irrigation, and business. She decided to plant walnuts, a highly profitable but incredibly thirsty crop. To satiate their water needs, she took advantage of the area’s regular flash flooding to create a novel system of water collection and control structures. Her 1887 patent for dam and reservoir construction featured a series of ascending dams constructed so that when the lower basin filled, water pressure supported the dam above it, acting as both a reserve of water and a reinforcement. 


These inventions allowed her water-hungry walnuts to flourish. Within five years, her walnut farm became the largest in California, and subsequent patents earned her two prizes at the Chicago World’s Fair. Soon her ventures took her to the realms of government and activism, where she spearheaded the Los Angeles Flood Control Act of 1915, served in public office before she even had the right to vote, and attended the US Chamber of Commerce convention as its first female delegate. Alongside Susan B. Anthony, she travelled across the country promoting women’s causes. After her death, the government used her work to build the Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal, which she had urged lawmakers to construct throughout her life. 


Today, Strong’s work has rightly led to her induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame. As her daughter Hattie put it, “She had the brains to think up a way out and the courage and perseverance to carry her ideas to completion.” 


Sources & Further Reading 


Dr. Mary Engle Pennington (1872-1952): The Ice Woman

Refrigeration is a cornerstone of our food system. Ensuring that transportation maintains an adequate “cold chain” of perishables is critical to our health and the availability of countless foods, such as dairy, meat, and fish. We have Mary Pennington to thank for the abundance of these staples on our shelves. 


Gender barriers in college did not dissuade Pennington from pursuing a robust education. Although she completed the requirements for a BS in Chemistry with minors in zoology and botany, the University of Pennsylvania did not grant degrees to women at the time and instead gave her a certificate of proficiency in 1892. Three years later, when Penn began offering degrees to women, she returned to earn a PhD.  


Pennington joined the US Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry, which would later become the Food and Drug Administration, in 1905. Following the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, she became the FDA’s first female lab chief and turned her attention to developing safety protocols for preventing contamination in chicken and milk processing. An engineer as well as a scientist, Pennington investigated refrigeration cars across the US, created standards for their construction, patented multiple food safety inventions, and later helped design commercial and consumer refrigerators.  


Pennington’s work was applauded by her peers both during her life and after. Herbert Hoover awarded her the Notable Service Medal in 1919; the American Chemical Society, of which she was a member, granted her the Garvan-Olin Medal for her achievements as a female scientist; in 1941, the New Yorker celebrated and profiled her as the “Ice Woman” of refrigeration; and she received numerous prestigious fellowships throughout her career. Posthumously, she was the first woman inducted into the Poultry Historical Society Hall of Fame, and she now also resides in the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Hall of Fame, the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame. 


Sources & Further Reading 


Alice Catherine Evans (1881-1975): The Pasteurization Champion

Alice Evans is best known for her research on bacterial contamination in raw milk, and her work was critical to normalizing pasteurization and codifying procedures that keep us safe today. She received a BS in bacteriology from Cornell in 1909 and an MS from the University of Wisconsin in 1910, becoming the first woman to receive a bacteriology scholarship from the college. Instead of pursuing a PhD, she joined the Dairy Division of the Bureau of Animal Husbandry at the USDA and turned her attention to brucellosis, an infection that causes sudden miscarriages in animals. Though it was thought to pose a risk to humans, the disease was not well understood. 


Evans connected brucellosis to a human condition called undulant fever, identified the bacterium causing the painful condition, and hypothesized that it could be passed from cows to humans by consumption of raw milk. When she published her findings in 1917, her work was met with a fierce wave of criticism. The idea that a female scientist, lacking a PhD, had discovered something that her decorated male peers had overlooked, was unthinkable. Her findings, however, were verified a few years later, and Evans was vindicated. 


Evans was elected president of the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1927 but could not attend her own inauguration because she was suffering from brucellosis herself, which she’d contracted during her research. Despite her illness, she continued to advocate for pasteurization of milk and study other bacteria like streptococcus. Even after her official retirement, she continued working in the field, and she became a popular speaker, lecturing on women’s education, business, and scientific careers. In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Her discovery is now considered one of the most important public health contributions of the 20th century. 


Sources & Further Reading 


Dr. Evangelina Villegas (1924-2017): The Maize Maestra

The world would be a hungrier place without Evangelina Villegas’ innovative work on corn and her development of Quality Protein Maize (QPM). Educated at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico, she began working for Mexico’s National Institute of Nutrition in 1950 and initiated the Wheat Industrial Quality Chemical Laboratory in 1957. In the 1960s, she earned an MS in cereals from Kansas State University and a PhD in cereal chemistry and breeding from North Dakota State University, then joined the Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) back in Mexico. 


At CIMMYT, Villegas began working with Dr. Surinder Vasal to develop corn with higher protein and greater nutritional value. Through chemistry and plant breeding, the two produced a QPM variety that not only had high levels of lysine and tryptophan (two important amino acids) but also tasted good. This new maize, which farmers started growing in Ghana and several African countries in the 1990s, quickly proved a success. Children who ate QPM grew faster and had lower incidence of malnutrition disorders than those who did not. For their work, Villegas and Vasal were jointly awarded the World Food Prize in 2000, and Villegas was the first woman to ever receive it. Then-president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo also granted Villegas the 2000 Woman of the Year Award. 


Villegas served CIMMYT until 1989, traveling the globe to educate young scientists and consult for national research programs in Asia, Africa, and other parts of Latin America. Today, over 75% of the maize grown in Ghana is QPM, and Villegas’ research has nourished millions of children in developing countries. 


Sources & Further Reading 


Dr. Maria Isabel Andrade (1958-Present): The Sweet Potato Savant 

Like Evangelina Villegas before her, Maria Andrade set her sights on another staple food that could be bred to reduce malnutrition: the sweet potato. And, like Villegas, she won a World Food Prize for her work, alongside Drs. Robert Mwanga, Jan Low, and Howarth Bouis in 2016. 


Born in Cape Verde, Andrade received her BS and MS in plant genetics from the University of Arizona and started a vegetable planting program back home on the West African island the following year. She began to wonder if the humble sweet potato could be a solution to drought-related famines as it often bore harvests while other crops withered in the Cape Verde heat. When she headed to North Carolina to complete her PhD in plant breeding, the orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) became her focus.  


During and after her doctorate, Andrade bred sweet potatoes for traits that made them drought-resistant, such as thicker stems, smaller leaves, and insulating canopies that seal in moisture. When the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture sent her to Southern Africa, she learned that vitamin A deficiencies were ravaging Mozambique communities. She set about creating more varieties of high yield, biofortified OFSP to combat this issue alongside Mwanga, Low, and Bouis at the International Potato Center (CIP). 


Andrade and her team also recognized that encouraging adoption of the new OFSP was a social matter, not just a scientific one. They launched a campaign entitled “the sweet that gives health,” which entailed creating new recipes for sweet potatoes using local ingredients like sugarcane, donning bright orange wardrobes, and working with farmers to replace the pale-fleshed, vitamin-poor traditional breeds with the resilient varieties they’d developed. OFSP is now grown everywhere from Cape Verde to Bangladesh, and Andrade continues to fight vitamin deficiency and malnutrition through her work. 


Sources & Further Reading 


Learn About More Women Whose Work Changed Food Systems! 

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Food Waste Prevention in the Pacific Northwest: Three Expert Perspectives

Writer: Olivia BOlivia B
Feb 207 min read

Left to right: Judith Hochhauser Schneider, Emily Hovis, Naomi Logan, Leslie Mackie


The Pacific Northwest leads the nation in its efforts to prevent food waste. Anyone keen to join the endeavor—whether they be a multinational corporation or simply a home chef—should heed our region’s advancements in sustainable business, health science, and retail technology as we forge the future of food rescue.  

 

To this end, the Global Impact Collective hosted our third event for the Seattle community featuring three panelists on the cutting edge of food waste reduction. Our Vice President of Partnership Development, Judith Hochhauser Schneider, moderated the panel discussion between these experts: Emily Hovis, an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, former food safety regulator, and small farm owner, brought knowledge of government policy to the panel; Naomi Logan, head of product at Shelf Engine, offered insights into retail technological solutions to food waste prevention by improving inventory accuracy; and Leslie Mackie, founder and owner of beloved local establishment Macrina Bakery, provided a local business and restaurateur perspective.


After a lively social gathering in the workspace of our partner Tactile, Inc., the panel began. The panelists explored the sprawling landscape of food systems, touching on everything from government policy in food rescue to the use of smart sensors in grocery store freezers. Their discussion of health regulation, customer miseducation, and the underfunding of volunteer organizations gave insight into the true scope of the challenges of food rescue efforts in any local community. Yet despite how large each challenge loomed, the panel was optimistic about reducing food waste, citing new technologies that can be integrated into our systems, community partnerships between businesses, and the importance of data to make sure food gets to those who need it. 


Challenges


Changing Business Behavior at Scale

Without incentives that encourage businesses to adopt prevention programs and robust infrastructure, progress can be slow and arduous.

  • Entrenched practices: Many businesses have ordering and supply procedures that, while inefficient and wasteful from a food systems perspective, are deeply ingrained or difficult to alter, and there’s little financial incentive to shift to more prevention-friendly frameworks. 

  • Lack of rigorous transportation systems: Bringing excess food to those who need it is logistically difficult. “Most food banks are run by volunteers,” Leslie pointed out. “Getting someone who can drive to Kent [where the Macrina’s Bakery facility is based] for whatever might be needed is difficult.” 

  • Practical considerations: Leslie explained that Macrina Bakery needs to bake excess product because it ensures that if a baked good is dropped, burned, or not up to quality standards, it can be replaced. Additionally, without advanced data analysis systems at the retail level, it’s impossible to know in advance what products customers will or won’t buy on a certain day. 


Health Policy in Food Rescue

Rescuing perishables from retailers and grocers accomplishes nothing if the food is unsafe to consume by the time it reaches the individuals whom it’s meant to feed.  

  • Mishandling of donations: “You would have a food business who is donating the food and it's like, great. That's what we want to have happen,” Emily said, recalling her days as a food safety inspector. “But then they're not actually handling it like it is food for a customer. They're leaving a pallet of refrigerated food on the loading dock because they're waiting for it to be picked up because they were told that a volunteer would come. Then the volunteer doesn’t come, and the food just sits there.” 

  • Lower food quality: Products with the shortest shelf life, such as fresh bread, milk, and eggs, are often also the healthiest. Without safe transport for these foods, only canned and processed food will reach those in need. “We want to make sure that the food that's being donated and given to people is not just packaged garbage. We want to make sure that they're getting nutrient-dense food that's going to feed their bodies,” Emily said.  


Lack of Consumer Education

Consumers have a role to play in food waste prevention, yet most do not understand how to reduce their own waste or why it’s a problem. “Recycling's not perfect, but I think most people know what recycling is and how to do it,” Emily said. “We don't really have that for food waste.” 

  • Insufficient label regulation: “Almost all labels on packaged foods are a manufacturers’ best guess of the best quality of that food.” She encourages her students to not rely solely on the printed expiration dates when deciding whether to throw food out (within reason), instead using their senses to determine its quality. “I talk to so many people who throw out food all the time because there's a date on it.”  

  • Expectations of abundance: Customers presuming constant and ample access to all types of produce, regardless of season, drive unsustainable farming habits and pollutive, expensive transportation.  

  • Appearance judgments: People are hesitant to embrace “misfit” produce, leading companies to toss perfectly viable but imperfect-looking food. “Consumers need to understand that produce looks different when it comes out of the ground, and only a small subset of produce makes it to market. Some of the ugly stuff never gets harvested,” Emily said.


Opportunities


Technological Advancements

Companies like Shelf Engine are leading the charge towards integrating technology into our food systems to make them more environmentally friendly.  

  • Improved accuracy: “Variable conditions in stores, what lot you got from the vendor, making sure that you order enough so that even with the amount of variability you’ll still have enough product on hand—all of these can be the cause of a lot of waste,” explained Naomi. In the future, she envisions computerized inventory management that uses sensors to detect spoilage, monitor freezers, and track shelf life. 

  • AI-fueled predictive tech: “The predictions are getting so much better, and there's just no way that a human can do that as well as technology does,” Naomi said.


Increased Visibility and Funding

Washington and the broader Pacific Northwest have seen a renewed interest in food waste prevention. “We’ve had more funding within the last few years, primarily because of the COVID pandemic and big increases in food insecurity,” Emily said. “There’s a lot of research and interest in this space, and people are trying to figure out how we can do better.” As a result, we’ve seen: 

  • Investment in hunger relief: Organizations can afford to pay volunteers and invest in more rigorous, standardized systems for transporting rescued food.  

  • Improved food safety: With increased funding, companies can also afford larger fleets of refrigerated vehicles to maintain the all-important cold chain, ensuring that food reaches recipients in a timely and safe manner. 

  • Education efforts: Anne Garsztka of the World Wildlife Fund mentioned the WWF’s Food Waste Warriors program, which could help reduce educational shortcomings. “We can teach kids and reach their parents through them. Once they know about waste, they’ll correct their parents and teachers. They're like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, that goes in that bin.’” 


Community Partnerships

No single business can handle all the moving pieces of food rescue, which is where community comes in. Each party contributes what they can to establish a food rescue chain and create value-added products. For instance, Macrina Bakery has found new ways to reclaim unsold bread by fostering business partnerships with PCC Community Markets and FareStart, a nonprofit helping people overcome barriers to employment by training them in food service. “Macrina is picking up bread from PCC that’s shrink [loss of inventory] left over, then bringing it to our freezer. Then FareStart picks up the bread from Macrina, and they repurpose it into croutons,” Leslie explained. “From March to December of last year, we recovered about 3,500 pounds of bread.” 


Filling Data Vacuums

Missing data often prevents food from reaching its destination. Emily is working on a research project with the Washington State Department of Ecology to create a food rescue map, working closely with hunger relief organizations. When completed, the rescue map will quickly and smoothly connect farms with relief services and people in need, and it will be regularly updated and maintained by the Department of Ecology. 


attendees gather around panelists
Attendees listen to the panelists speak.

Reflections

After the panel, attendees discussed their takeaways. “In any innovation space there’s exciting energy, and we need that. It’s easy to feel bogged down, but in this space, there’s only positive energy,” said Kate Thel, community engagement coordinator at Seattle Good Business Network. “People are putting their heads together to find solutions.” 


Others echoed her sentiment. “I thought my network was so developed and then I come here and realize how many folks I don’t know—who are interested in all the same things!” said Jillian Moore, whose business, Cascadia Produce, specializes in rescuing surplus food from farms and getting it to food-insecure individuals. “There are all these people outside our networks also having these conversations. It’s so exciting.” 


Ideas from the event are also finding their way into schools. Vaanya Sharma, a junior at Interlake Senior High School, not only founded an environmental impact club to educate peers and younger students on food waste, but she also serves as a Lead for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Youth Ambassadors Program. Vaanya is currently collaborating with the school board to create a sustainability plan for the Bellevue School District, and she has been nominated for the 2025 EPA’s President’s Environmental Youth Award. “There’s a lot of opportunity to get younger people involved in sustainability,” she said.  


Naomi Logan from Shelf Engine, one of our panelists, was surprised and inspired by the diversity of participants. “I’m impressed by how many people showed up from totally different levels of experience, ages, industries, et cetera. I hope we’ll figure out if there are ways we can build broader partnerships with these communities and harness some of their interests and ideas, making connections across the industry.” 


True to our values, every leftover pizza found a home by night’s end, and no food was wasted. Every attendee left brimming with ideas that, if the intensity of the discussion was any indication, will soon take root beyond the walls of Tactile—whether that means designing new government policies, investing in consumer education programs, or simply embracing the ugly fruits neglected at the bottom of a grocery display. Change of any size brings us closer to a waste-free, well-fed future. 


Big thanks again to all who attended, and to our amazing panelists who kept this discussion alive. The Global Impact Collective will be hosting our next community networking event in May, tackling another wicked issue with a fresh panel of experts. Keep an eye out for more details soon! In the meantime, follow us on LinkedIn to get involved and stay up to date. 

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