Gus Schumacher from the Wholesome Wave joins the FRC for our Food Bites series and explores the current issues in the food system and what civil society organisations and academics could be doing to work towards solutions that address the issues within the food system.

Gus is Founding Board Member of Wholesome Wave, a Bridgeport, Connecticut based non-profit organization working on nutrition incentives for diet impacted vulnerable families.

He served as President Clinton’s Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at USDA from 1997 to 2001.

Prior to his Under secretary’s Senate confirmation, Schumacher was Administrator of USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service and earlier worked as a senior Agri-lender for the World Bank. He also served as Commissioner of Food and Agriculture in Massachusetts from 1985 to 1991.

After Harvard College, he studied at the London School of Economics, was a Research Associate in agribusiness at the Harvard Business School, working with Professor Ray A. Goldberg and was an Associate at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.

Schumacher was a member of the 21st Century Sustainable Agricultural Task Force of the National Academy of Sciences and with colleagues and also oversaw the preparation of the Task Force Report of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, titled “Modernizing America’s Food and  Farm Policy: Vision for a New Direction”(2008).

He has received leadership awards from the James Beard Foundation and from the EOS Foundation.