Food Politics

It’s why building the circular economy is so important. When you design for disassembly, eliminate the concept of waste and optimize the utility of our limited raw materials, as nature so beautifully does, you offer hope of a future where the needs of all people can be met without threatening the biosphere. You offer a chance for growth without squeezing the planet dry.

I’m encouraged by the recent trend of gamification, in particular its applications in the environmental space.

Just over a year ago, Sodexo, a leader in delivering sustainable, integrated facilities management and food service operations with a significant presence in Vermont, announced a major initiative to help grow Vermont’s local food economy by committing to buy local food first via a comprehensive program called “Vermont First”.

We grantmakers should strive to be enablers, finding effective partners and using our charitable gifts to allow those partners to be the best versions of themselves.

So what would the Olympics look like in non-sports form? Let’s assume the whole world was willing to gather for some other purpose, sending official delegations, national leaders, support staff and even fans to one city for two weeks. What if that gathering captured the same spirit of hope and enthusiasm that permeates the Olympic Games? Perhaps the focus could even be something as ambitious as solving climate change.

Ecocentricity blog by Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

Food waste continues to be a global challenge despite industry-wide efforts to reduce it. Every year, about 80 billion pounds of food are discarded in the U.S. The EPA issued a telling statement about the situation in September when it said, “Let us feed people, not landfills.”

Rice is a food staple to more than half of the world’s seven billion people. A large part of rice consumption occurs in Asia, where it is a staple for a majority of the population, including the region’s 560 million hungry people. At the current global population growth rate, the world will have to grow 50 percent more rice by 2050.

The global population is expected to be over nine billion by mid-century. Feeding that many people without “exceeding ecological and social limits” presents the food and beverage industry with “unique challenges,” proclaims a recently released report on the food and beverage industry by the sustainability consulting firm, Pure Strategies.