Ivanka Trump is stepping back into the public eye with a cause that marries logistics with human need: getting fresh produce into the hands of families who need it most. On Thursday, she’ll take the stage at the Heartland Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas, to champion an issue she’s quietly advanced for years—this time through a new vehicle with both market ambition and moral purpose.
In a conversation with Thrive Global founder Arianna Huffington, Trump will outline her vision for using private-sector efficiency to solve one of the nation’s most stubborn public health challenges: nutrition inequity. She’ll argue that smarter sourcing, stronger supply chains, and data-driven partnerships can serve both farmers and families—lowering waste, increasing access, and re-centering agriculture in America’s public health conversation, according to a report by Axios.
At the center of that effort is Planet Harvest, a “profit-for-purpose” enterprise she co-founded in 2023 alongside Melissa Melshenker Ackerman, a veteran of the produce industry. Headquartered in Chicago, the company specializes in redirecting surplus fruits and vegetables—often left to rot due to logistical gaps—into value-added products like sugar-free dried cherries or directly into communities in need. It’s a model that doesn’t rely on government subsidies or goodwill alone; it works because it’s built to scale.
Trump credits her work on the USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box program during the pandemic as the catalyst. That wartime-like mobilization of food distribution, she says, opened her eyes to the systemic failures—and the untapped potential—within American agriculture. Since leaving the White House, she’s stayed largely out of sight but has quietly funneled support into disaster relief efforts in Maui, Fort Myers, Kentucky, and Los Angeles, focusing specifically on emergency nutrition.
The Heartland Summit—hosted by Heartland Forward, a think tank founded by descendants of the Walton family—offers a fitting venue for Trump’s reemergence. Bentonville has become a magnet for public-private experiments in health, infrastructure, and innovation, a regional ambition largely driven by Alice Walton’s philanthropy and the next generation of Walmart heirs.
Trump’s renewed focus aligns with broader national efforts to shift the health conversation upstream, toward prevention and dietary reform. It echoes the Make America Healthy Again initiative spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which elevates nutrition as a frontline defense against chronic disease. And it inevitably invites comparison to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign—a legacy Trump acknowledges, even as she emphasizes different tactics: efficiency, entrepreneurship, and scale.
