Appetite for Change: What's Next

24 Aug 2011 – Jennifer Biringer

On the heels of the launch of Appetite for Change, our team has spotted a number of developments and received interest in working together to transform our food system. And the overall theme of access to good food remains in the limelight, most recently with Wendell Pierce of ‘The Wire’ and ‘Treme’ to open grocery stores in food deserts in his hometown of New Orleans. Wal-Mart has also pledged to open 300 new stores in food deserts over the next five years. Whether the big box retailer will be able to compete with Pierce’s plans to rebuild community by whetting local appetites (monthly crawfish boils, anyone?) will remain to be seen, Wal-Mart’s food sustainability commitments notwithstanding.

We have also heard from a range of entrepreneurs, other change agents and experts in the field who have shared their successes in building a more resilient and equitable food system. For example, BrightFarms is building rooftop aquaponic farms and is slated to expand to eight U.S. supermarket chains, including some of the largest national retail chains.

But perhaps most intriguing is the interest we’ve gotten from food system ‘enablers’ – companies in sectors on whom the food sector depends, such as ICT, transport and finance. This is music to our ears, because we see systems approaches that invite these enablers as well as entrepreneurs and other non-traditional actors to the table as crucial to achieving transformational change. We are particularly intrigued by the role ICT companies can play in bringing tools, approaches and experience with the potential to shortcut work on challenges like empowerment and inclusion that exist at both the production and consumption ends of the food value chain. Technology also offers the ability to track and apply hitherto unmanageable (if not plain unimaginable) amounts of data relating to everything from weather to nutritional content. Applied judiciously by food companies themselves and by ICT companies and their logistics and retail partners, such data will increase understanding of food system complexity and enable better decision-making in the quest to make it sustainable.

In the Fall and Winter we will be organizing a series of convenings around these and other key Appetite for Change themes, so stay tuned for further developments. In the meantime, keep the inspirational ideas coming!