The 6th Food System


Food System 6 is on a mission to accelerate innovations that transition us to a just and regenerative food system. We envision a 6th food system that scales sustainable solutions, builds networks of connectivity, restores biological and cultural diversity, positively impacts health outcomes for everyone, and nurtures both our soils and our spirits.    
The consolidation of wealth and power in the food system has led to devastating outcomes for communities, planet, and people.

​From rising levels of food insecurity and hunger to ecological degradation in our most abundant natural ecosystems, the consolidation of power and wealth that is the marker of this current food system - the 5th food system - has stripped farmers, workers, and consumers of their right to innovation, ownership, and autonomy and has systematically degraded human health, community wealth, and ecological resilience.

While community-based innovation is key to diversifying our food system solutions, the change-makers and innovators in our frontline communities do not have access to the resources and support they need to launch and scale business models designed to democratize wealth and to restore health, ecology, and justice back into our food system.
Food System 6 was designed to build a better future. We work together with our community to facilitate the transition to a more just and regenerative, 6th food system, in three ways:

  • We run a dynamic business accelerator tailored to support frontline entrepreneurs facing the complexity of building businesses for a 6th food system.

 
  • We facilitate open and honest dialogues about how to repair our extractive history of agriculture, while radically re-imagining our food system to be built on circularity, regeneration, and values-based supply chains serving local and regional food systems.
The time to act is now!

As we work with our community to usher in the transition of our food system, capital-intensive business models and agri-food monopolies continue to extract resources from the planet, increase food insecurity, expose us to harmful pesticides, and push us to the brink of ecological extinction. We continue to see people separated from their natural relationships to food, their communities, and their ecosystems. And the majority of new, values-based solutions that are growing out of this urgent need for change, fail to succeed, secure investment, or even “survive the proverbial valley of death,” preserving the status quo of wealth, ownership and income inequality.

The challenge to support entrepreneurs as they build the solution most needed to build a more just and regenerative food system is what defines our work at Food System 6. Along with our community of farmers, community-leaders, innovators, and funders, we are facing down the challenge with vigor and hope.