Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé Profile

Admired activist Frances Moore Lappé has driven an international anti-hunger movement since the 1970s. The founder of Small Planet Institute, Frances has argued that world hunger is not at its roots an agricultural issue, but rather, the result of ineffective government policies and corrupted democracy. She is recognized as one of the most influential figures in getting people to eat a healthier diet that also reduces humanity’s carbon footprint.

As the director of the Small Planet Institute, Frances oversees, coordinates, and promotes research that reveals how people on every continent are creating living democracies as they discover their power to remake societal rules and norms to serve their widely shared values. She and her team support this historic awakening through collaborative public education efforts with colleagues worldwide and through their own books, articles, websites, speeches, and other projects.

Author of 21 books, Frances’s 1971 Diet for a Small Planet was the first major book to discuss diet and agriculture’s impact on the environment. Recently, an updated version of her well-known book World Hunger: Ten Myths (with Joseph Collins) has been released. Both her writing and political activism advocate the need for “living democracies” – governments that govern for the public good rather than wealthy interests. In recent years she collaborated with the King of Bhutan to develop and write “Bhutan’s Happiness: Towards a New Development Paradigm”, a report that was submitted to the UN laying out a pathway to a sustainable development paradigm to ensure planetary wellbeing. During the latest presidential election cycle, she was a key figure in Democracy Spring, a ten day non-violent protest march to reduce the influence of big money in politics and expand and protect voting rights.

Frances is a founding councilor of the 50-member, Hamburg-based World Future Council. She also serves on the boards of David Korten’s People-Centered Development Forum, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Chez Panisse Foundation, and Earth Corps.

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  Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 21 books, many focusing on themes of “living democracy”—suggesting not only a government accountable to citizens but a way of living aligned with the deep human need for connection, meaning, and power. She has received 20 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions across the country, mostly recently Indiana University in 2021.

  In 1987 Frances received the Right Livelihood Award (considered an “Alternative Nobel”) “for revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them.”

  In 1985, she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley and from 2000 to 2001, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  In 2008 she received the James Beard Foundation Humanitarian of the Year Award for her lifelong impact on the way people all over the world think about food, nutrition, and agriculture.

  Other notable awards include the International Studies Association’s 2009 Outstanding Public Scholar Award, and in 2011, the Nonino Prize in Italy for her life’s work. In 2007 Frances became a founding member of the World Future Council, based in Hamburg, Germany.

  Frances is the cofounder of three organizations, including Oakland-based think tank Food First, and the Small Planet Institute. Frances and her daughter Anna Lappé also cofounded the Small Planet Fund, which channels resources to democratic social movements worldwide