Transferring and Scaling Sustainable Local Food Economy Solutions

The current industrial food system, including its large-scale agribusinesses, food-processing companies, and retailers, is in urgent need of a transformation towards sustainability. There are timely opportunities to adopt innovative entrepreneurial models such as land trusts, cooperatives, and benefit corporations, to create vibrant and sustainable local food economies. Sustainable local food enterprises produce healthy food while proving fulfilling quality jobs, advancing social justice, and creating net-positive impacts on the environment.

This project will build capacity in food entrepreneurs and stakeholders to create, manage, and support sustainable local food enterprises in four regions across three countries. The four regions are committed to sustainable local food economies, yet, within different geographical, socio-political, and historical contexts. Project activities in the four regions use a similar model for building implementation capacity based on evidence and facilitating real-world experiences, but vary to account for these contexts. The ultimate goal is to develop a set of enterprise plans ready to be implemented by entrepreneurs and stakeholders involved in the project.

Enterprise plans will be developed for land trusts in the Portland region (USA), urban agriculture cooperatives in Hong Kong (SAR), plant-based protein small-to-medium enterprises in the metropolitan region of Hamburg (Germany), and mill-bakery cooperatives in the metropolitan region of Phoenix (USA).

In one year of GCSO funding, this project will:

Build capacity in food entrepreneurs and stakeholders in Portland, Hong Kong, Hamburg, Phoenix

Develop enterprise plans for land trusts, cooperatives, and benefit corporations in the four regions

Write and submit two grant proposals to distribute this type of capacity building to other regions