Why food?

We all need food, and foods drives how we thrive

Fresh and freshly-made food – in abundant variety – is recommended for everyone. But let’s face it, we can’t all afford to eat that way due to the high cost of ingredients, the time and effort needed to prepare meals, or our ability to pay others to do that work for us. Sadly, food system workers – from farmers to truckers to grocery and foodservice employees – are often the most food insecure among us. The person who needs fresh food the most may not even have access to a kitchen.

Historical solutions made calories more affordable and accessible, and raised masses from hunger — but now these models rely too much on corn, soy, and wheat, as well as ultra-processed, shelf-stable and filler foods. Fast food also satisfies cravings instead of fueling our health and wellbeing. Overly meaty diets require too much land for feed and animals, while animal welfare declines.

Our current produce system provides the wonder of year-round access to anything grown anywhere, following harvests to keep shelves always stocked. However, the needs for uniformity, product aggregation, long travel time and shelf life, and shiny store displays have engineered away taste and nutrition over yield, sheen, and transportability, on an increasingly global scale.

Across the food system, our overtaxing of the land is turning the biological engine of soil – evolved over billions of years to feed humans and animals and power habitats and ecosystems – into barren dust. We have fewer than 100 years of topsoils left. Freshwater systems to sustain life are being drained and continually polluted from industrial agriculture run-off. Microplastics are now flowing everywhere, even showing back up in the soil as treated wastewater has been used for fertilizers.

The global food system also contributes ~30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, while 30% of all food grown is wasted. And our human population and inefficient consumption keeps growing.