Joan Dye Gussow

Dr. Joan Dye Gussow has been a powerful influence in food and farm policy, and as a vocal critic of the industrialized U.S. food system is known by many as the matriarch of the organic, locavore, and small-farm movement. She is currently the Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and the former chair of their Nutrition Education Department. At Columbia, she created the legendary course, Nutritional Ecology.

Along with her late-husband – artist, author, and environmental activist Alan Gussow – she has been a life-long avid organic gardener, which is chronicled in her numerous books including The Feeding Web, This Organic Life and her most recent, Growing Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Growing Vegetables.