George Steinmetz on the hidden costs of our food system
For photographer George Steinmetz ’79, recipient of the Doerr School of Sustainability’s 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award, a career in photography has meant soaring over deserts, rainforests and urban sprawls — capturing the fragile beauty of our planet from above. From the fragile veins of a rainforest to the geometric sprawl of industrial agriculture, his camera reveals patterns invisible to those bound by the earth.
On March 11, Steinmetz returned to the Farm to unveil his book, “Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s Food,” published in Oct. 2024. Steinmetz led a masterclass, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of documenting the world’s food systems, for students in the seminar EARTHSYS 185: Feeding Nine Billion. He also held a talk titled “Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?” in Hewlett Teaching Center.
In a decade-long odyssey across 36 countries and six continents, Steinmetz chronicles the vast and intricate machinery that feeds humanity, exposing not just its scale but its consequences.
Steinmetz’s journey into photography was neither planned nor conventional. Studying geophysics at Stanford, he told the audience: “To be honest, I wasn’t exactly interested in geophysics. It just happened to be the second highest-paying major.”
His true education began not in lecture halls but on the open road — 28 months of hitchhiking across Africa, sleeping on train roofs, wandering through forests and buying his first camera with no prior experience, according to his talk.
Decades later, with over 40 National Geographic photo essays and accolades, including the Environmental Vision Award and three World Press Photo prizes, Steinmetz has become a cartographer of hidden landscapes, with a motorized paraglider, its 310 cc engine — named “Monster” — strapped to his back.
From this fragile perch, he hovers between earth and ether, following the old pilot’s adage: “Altitude is your friend,” Steinmetz said at the event. The audience laughed. “I figured it meant I’d have more time to scream on the way down,” he added.
Michael Fried — director of Planet Earth Arts, a project commissioning, presenting and showcasing works of environmental art, including creative writing, dance, film, media, fine art, music, photography and theater — introduced Steinmetz’s evening presentation as part of an ongoing effort to merge the arts, humanities and sciences exploring the future of all life.
Fried, whose work at Planet Earth Arts champions the role of storytelling in shifting public consciousness, emphasized the necessity of such talks. “George goes and he sees and he clicks — and does not create any opinion but just brings the sense of reality to these photographs that take people’s breaths away. Reading George’s book was an intoxicating, mind blowing experience. I also admire his aerial geometrics,” Fried said to The Daily.
Steinmetz projected images onto a towering screen that unspooled the story of modern food production: wheat fields stretching like golden oceans across Kansas, Indian shrimp farms sculpted like abstract mosaics, Australian cattle stations vast as entire nations.
Poultry plants where hundreds of thousands of birds spend their entire lives under artificial light, crammed wing to wing. Cattle confined to barren pens, their bodies engineered for maximum yield. In a Brazilian slaughterhouse, cow skins hang on the wall as 1,200 workers move in synchronized precision. The relentless pace is dictated by the unyielding demands of a global supply chain, according to Steinmetz’s talk.
“These cows live in a sad, still environment,” Steinmetz said to the audience, pausing on the image of the calf separated from its mother, tiny and alone on the screen.
Audience members said they were impacted by Steinmetz’s talk. Rachel Lit ’25 spoke of the images’ stark honesty, particularly those illuminating the beef industry’s toll on the climate. “The meat industry is devastating for the environment,” Lit said.
Isabel Vilá Ortiz ’25 was “caught between exhaustion from finals and a surge of inspiration,” she said. For her, “this talk gives hope.”
Students weren’t the only ones impacted by Steinmetz’s work. “We, humans, have gone too far. Through his presentation, Steinmetz shows that industrial meat production places an unbearable strain on the planet, and we must rethink the way we feed ourselves,” Fried said.
According to Fried, “George’s talk gives great hope in these dark, dystopian times. And hope is a verb. One of the challenges for those of us who consider ourselves as environmental activists is how overwhelmed we can feel. George does not preach, rather he brings the truth to light through his photographic investigation so we can make more informed decisions about our food.”
As the presentation drew to a close, Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Chris Field joined Steinmetz in addressing one of the most staggering statistics of the night: “The total biomass of domesticated poultry, mostly chickens, now outweighs that of all wild birds combined and layers upon layers of stacked chicken bones fill processing floors.”
Steinmetz said, “We have a natural right to see how the food we eat is made. We are putting this into our bodies, so we need to see where it comes from. There are environmental consequences to what we eat.”
When asked by the audience how one might follow in his footsteps, how one could go about capturing such raw, unfiltered truths, Steinmetz’s answer was simple: “Go.”
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