Giving Compass' Take:
- Rockefeller Foundation's Nourish People and the Planet initiative invests in food innovation that centers equity in the future of food sustainability.
- How can donors contribute to building an equitable food system? What does that look like at the local level?
- Read why women are critical for a sustainable food system.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
This World Food Day came at a critical inflection point for our food systems. There is broad recognition that the way we eat now is failing to protect our health and the health of the planet. Despite enough food being produced annually to feed the world, 811 million people still go hungry and 3 billion people do not have access to healthy diets, numbers that were made worse by Covid-19 disruptions. The food system is also one of the largest contributors to climate change, with 25% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from food production. Further, the system does not deliver fair returns to the people who provide our food. In sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers account for 90 percent of food production, yet many farmers barely produce enough food to feed their families.
Despite these sobering facts, we believe that we can forge a path to a better food future. In September, The UN Food Systems Summit, the first of its kind, brought world leaders together to imagine how food systems can better serve all people, and protect the earth, for generations to come. The most valuable outcomes were the collaboration and recognition that food connects to everything in our lives including our planetary, community, and individual health; and acknowledgement by leaders from around the globe that the system is in desperate need of an overhaul.
At The Rockefeller Foundation, as part of our Nourish People and the Planet initiative, we are committed to building and supporting a greener, more nourishing, and more equitable future for our food systems. We understand that we cannot create an inclusive food system without each of these priorities working in tandem.
Foods cannot be considered healthy unless they are nourishing for their consumer, produced sustainably to support the land, and provide fair wages and working conditions to the people who make and deliver them.
Today, I wanted to share just a few of the ways we are investing in this vision.
Read the full article about investing in the future of the food system by Roy Steiner at The Rockefeller Foundation.