Giving Compass' Take:

• The Rockefeller Foundation lays out a plan to overhaul the U.S. food system to protect workers,  the environment, and consumers.

• What role can you play in supporting these changes? How can the food system be made equitable? 

• Find out why women are key for a more sustainable food system. 

As reflected in the illustration above, the change needed in the U.S. food system requires three significant shifts:

To realize these three interrelated shifts in transforming the U.S. food system, we need to strengthen and activate a set of cross-cutting capabilities that have not been adequately built into the system. Among the capabilities needed to accomplish the three shifts described above are:

  • Apply true cost accounting—the consideration of not only immediate and direct costs, but also extended and indirect costs—in policy, legislative, and programmatic decision-making, and in public messaging;
  • Ensure public purchasing generates more public good out of every public dollar spent on food, health, and nutrition;
  • Invest in coordinated federal, state, and local capabilities and emergency response plans to increase the flexibility and resilience of the food system;
  • Modernize data and technology platforms to provide the tools needed to operate the system more efficiently in normal operation and under stress;
  • Unify actors across multiple sectors—health, education, environment, labor, nutrition, agriculture—into a collaborative advocacy movement.