Scaling Good Food

Food Overview

In much of the world, the food we eat is increasing human health risks, while our methods for growing that food are harming the planet. Climate change is also making it harder for many to find the food they need to live and thrive. The Foundation is working on multiple fronts to ensure the world grows, produces, and eats “Good Food,” which benefits people and planet alike.

Lessons Learned

Transforming food systems is needed for people and planet. As we seek to make that a reality, we are applying several lessons, including: patient grantmaking, addressing access barriers, understanding the power of the public sector’s purchasing power, and sharing and ceding leadership.

OUR BIG BET ON FOOD:

Food is Medicine

A range of food-based interventions—including produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals—are collectively known as “Food is Medicine” and they hold immense promise in helping to prevent, manage, and treat chronic diseases. Our aim is to make Food is Medicine interventions accessible in the U.S. to all eligible patients as a reimbursable medical benefit, thus promoting equitable access to healthy diets, especially in underserved communities.

>1,000food
compositions essential to humanity analyzed

FEATURED IMPACT STORIES

Food is Medicine: Meet Kenny Joyner

Food is Medicine programs, including produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals, use food-based interventions to help prevent, manage, and treat diet-related diseases. Integrating nutrition into our healthcare system would enable doctors to prescribe healthy food, reducing the need for invasive health services while lowering healthcare costs.

GRANTEE IMPACT STORY

Latina-Focused Produce Rx Program Benefits Entire Families

When Celerina Rojas and her seven-year-old son were both diagnosed as pre-diabetic, she knew she had to act. She turned to Adelante Mujeres’ produce prescription program. She lost weight and now she, nor her son, are pre-diabetic

Read the grantee impact story

37%
sourced from the Global South

Good Food Purchasing

The Foundation has supported Good Food Purchasing in the U.S. since 2019. The aim is to promote food that is healthy and sustainable and that creates opportunities for small- to mid-scale farmers and historically disadvantaged farm and food businesses. Today, institutions serving meals to over 8.6 million people daily are shifting to Good Food in partnership with our grantees. The local food organizations we partner with are creating coalitions that connect local food producers with institutional purchasers—like school meal programs—thus providing more economic stability.

Historically underserved farmers have long been excluded from wholesale opportunities. Now...these farms are empowered to participate, grow, and sustain their business.
Bill Green
Executive Director
The Common Market Southeast

Global Foodbanking Network

In 2023, the Foundation partnered with The GlobalFoodBanking Network (GFN) to address food insecurity and reduce food waste and loss in ten countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As a result, GFN has provided targeted support so that 13 national food banks in 10 countries can tap new sources of food salvage. This has provided food for an additional 3.8 million food insecure people in the longer term, rescuing 33,408,005 kilograms of food and avoiding an estimated 143,675 metric tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) by recovering food destined for landfill.

13national
food banks in 10 countries tap into new sources of food, reducing emissions while increasing nutrition access

School Meals

With leadership from our Africa Regional Office, since 2020, we have contributed to expanding the reach of healthy school meals to almost 118 million new students globally. We are seeing great gains in commitment to providing children with school meals. In Kenya, for example, the government committed to universal coverage for school meals by 2030, and reached 2.5 million children in 2023.

FEATURED IMPACT STORIES

Serving Hot Breakfasts and Lunches in Kenya’s Schools

School feeding programs in Kenya have become especially important as drought increases food insecurity, and the meals are helping disrupt generational poverty.

GRANTEE IMPACT STORY

Kenya’s School Meals Disrupt Generational Poverty and Improve Community Outcomes

Rosaline Wanjiru Gitau finished high school with a C- due to food scarcity. However, a school lunch program by Food4Education, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, broke this cycle of poverty. Now, her daughter Robai receives at least one hot meal daily and aspires to become a doctor.

Read the grantee impact story

On Reflection

Lessons Learned from our Food Work

This work confirms that transforming food systems is what is best for people and planet. As we seek to make that a reality, we will apply several lessons, including the following.

Patient grantmaking unlocks the capacity and resources necessary to seed scaling opportunities. We must build a shared vision of success and be realistic and clear about the roles, resources, and capabilities of partner organizations.

To serve high-need populations, we must address access barriers. For example, our grantees at Duke University found that Hispanic populations faced specific barriers to enrolling in Food is Medicine programs, including language, transportation, and fear of enrollment leading to deportation. Other underserved communities face unique enrollment challenges, and either do not (or cannot) access the formal healthcare system.

The public sector’s purchasing power can uniquely influence food systems. By prioritizing the purchase of Good Food, public institutions – like schools and hospitals – can stimulate demand for healthier and more sustainably produced foods. However, to respond to this demand, food producers need support and incentives.

Leadership must be shared—and at times ceded. Through our work in fortified whole grains and school meal programs, we’ve ceded the driver’s seat to several experts and leaders around the world. As we have seen, providing support for local organizations to organize, align strategically, and build capacity is a powerful way to enable systems change. The Chicago and Atlanta work are examples of this.

Where matters. Locating our School Meals team in our Nairobi office has enabled trusted relationships and understanding—upon which we built the School Meals Coalition and its community of practice. At times, remaining too headquarters—focused has hindered our progress.

Maria Cristina Mosquera, a FUNDAEC liaison with farmers in the Growing Hope project, pulls some vegetables from the training farm.

Download the Food chapter or our full impact report now.

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download the full 2023 Impact Report

Jump to Other Chapters

CH.01

Energy

Speeding the Energy Transition

We’re assisting energy-poor countries grow through a mass deployment of renewable energy sources and a transition away from fossil fuels.

CH.03

Health

Advancing Health Solutions

We wrapped up some of our biggest pandemic-related initiatives and turned to disease surveillance during a year of discovery and rededication.

CH.04

Finance

Unlocking Finance

We are working to tap new sources of capital for renewable energy while funding partners committed to global ecological restoration.

CH.OV

Overview

Impact Report 2023

This report chronicles The Rockefeller Foundation’s journey in 2023 to reimagine our work and learn from past successes and shortcomings, all with the goal of improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable and underserved populations.