Happy New Year from the FSF team!
January 1st, 2022
Food Systems for the Future (FSF) is extremely proud of the progress we've made over the last year. Our theory of change requires identifying, partnering with and scaling innovative food and agriculture companies capable of making a nutrition impact particularly in underserved and low income communities. In 2021 FSF made significant progress aligning the development and raise of our first impact fund with bolstering the overarching nutrition eco-system. We know that delivering nutrition impact and financial return requires successful partnerships and not just internal operational and financial support. FSF is working to help create an enabling environment for food system transformation including, but not limited to: consumer awareness; requisite policy reform; and finance community support. Our FSF Institute team continued to deliver these efforts. Notable achievements and initiatives from the past year include:
FSF partnered with EAT Foundation, GAIN, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, FAIRR, International Fund for Agricultural Development, World Bank, and S2G to host the UN Food System Summit Independent Finance Dialog. As an outcome of this convening FSF now serves as a founding member of the Good Food Finance Network.
The goal of the Good Food Finance Network is to build a narrative for attracting and increasing funding for the just transformation of the food system both domestic and internationally. The Good Food Finance Network is working in close collaboration with the World Bank, S2G Ventures, UNEP FI, GEF, PRI, Just Rural Transition, and other supporting partners.
To increase support within the climate community for investment in a sustainable and just transition of the food system, FSF participated in COP26 by delivering remarks or comments at over fifteen events. FSF will join other food system leaders in ongoing domestic and international food system finance activities leading up to COP27.
To create holistic change through our financial investments, FSF continues our work to establish a robust metrics platform to measure nutrition impact.
As a means of providing more nutritious food access for underserved communities, FSF serves as a leading organization supporting domestic and international nutrition coalitions working to increase local business participation in school meal programs.
FSF continues to work with a team of organizations to highlight the immediate need for another White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health. After 50 years, and with recent reports showing 1 in 8 kids in Illinois experienced food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the time for action is now.
FSF partnered with the Harvard University Food Law and Policy Clinic and the International Food Banking Association to present a series of webinars regarding food safety, food donations, upcycling, and other issues related to creating more circularity in the food system.
FSF partnered with McGill University on a series of webinars regarding food system transformation and system circularity.
Key provisions of the Expanding SNAP Options Act, which FSF helped to craft and champion, were included in the American Rescue Plan Act.
In 2021, FSF welcomed Charles Allison, a seasoned fund manager with over 40 years of experience as Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director. Under Charles’s leadership FSF officially began the raise of our first Good Food Opportunity Fund (GFOF). The GFOF, a US nutrition impact fund, will prioritize investment in Black and Latinx entrepreneurs, partnering with and supporting innovative early growth stage companies across the food system. As COVID further illuminated the disparities in nutritious food access across America, businesses with the potential to address these issues are often overlooked. Qualified agri-food entrepreneurs operating in underserved communities too often are deemed a risky investment – and, as a result, lack access to capital, operating support, and an ecosystem for growth. Since our inception the FSF Institute has worked to change this situation by creating an enabling environment for these businesses to succeed. The GFOF will increase our ability to help ensure market access to affordable nutritious food by all Americans.
In the Africa portfolio, FSF continues to build on the 2020 groundwork in our launch country of Rwanda. In support of the government’s national nutrition strategy to increase animal protein intake, FSF aims to improve affordability and accessibility of eggs by scaling the commercial egg and poultry sector as a primary high impact / low cost proposition. Over the last year, we focused on identifying solutions and partners to address the high cost of poultry animal feed, which constitutes up to 70% of production costs due to the unpredictable cost of grains. In response to this challenge FSF formed a partnership with an innovative Rwandese alternative protein startup (producing Black Soldier Fly Larvae-BSFL) and a sector leading European BSFL company. Working together we will leapfrog the operational challenges of producing, scaling and commercializing of this innovative poultry feed grain substitute. The City of Kigali bio-waste will serve as the feedstock for the BSFL, delivering increased circularity to the Rwanda food system by reducing food waste. To ensure appropriate governance and consumer acceptance we are now also working with the Government of Rwanda on developing the requisite regulatory policies.
Simultaneously, FSF in partnership with Rabobank, is finalizing the design of the Africa Good Food Opportunity Fund (AGFOF). We are now working on securing resources to complete the pipeline development. FSF aims to begin the first raise for Africa GFOF in Q2. We look forward to providing more details on the fund goals, structure, and pipeline in the coming months.