Programs
Climate & Nature
Food systems are a climate opportunity. We need a better map.
Food systems generate roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. They are also primary drivers of biodiversity loss, deforestation, and the food insecurity and diet-related disease that together affect some 1.5 billion people each year. Yet sustainable food systems attract less than 10% of total foundation giving.
That gap is not mainly a matter of awareness. Many funders already name climate, nature, health, and equity among their top priorities. What has proven harder is finding a way into a field with no shared map: no common vision of what transformation looks like, and little agreement on where the most effective interventions sit.
In early 2025, Food System Innovations set out to understand why philanthropic investment has not scaled to meet the moment, and what it would take to change that. We conducted 15 in-depth expert interviews, reviewed recent climate philanthropy analyses, and examined coordination models from other fields. Two findings shaped everything that followed.
The encouraging news: There is more common ground than the field's debates suggest. Funders broadly agree on core problems, and there is real appetite for coordination. Collaborative efforts are already underway in distributed areas of the ecosystem.
The complex reality: Coordination remains difficult. Fragmentation in vision and approach, a divide between incrementalist and systems-change strategies, and deeper tensions around livestock, power, and ultra-processed foods all complicate collective action.
This guide is the result. It is a map of the philanthropic landscape as we found it, built to help funders get their bearings and identify untapped opportunities for coordination and impact.
This Guide is for:
Funders entering the food systems space who want to understand the landscape before deploying capital.
Experienced funders seeking shared frameworks, strategic context, and opportunities for greater coordination.
Practitioners and field leaders looking for clearer language to describe the dynamics shaping food systems philanthropy.
The Guide moves through three landscapes:
Common Ground covers the conditions that make coordination possible: what the absence of a shared North Star costs the field, where agreement already exists, and which coordination efforts are underway and open to new participants.
Uneven Ground covers the dynamics that complicate coordination. Fragmentation and the incrementalism debate are real, but they read less as problems to solve before coordination begins than as terrain that coordination itself can help clarify.
Contested Ground covers three areas where disagreement runs deeper: livestock, technology and power, and ultra-processed foods. These involve genuine differences in values, evidence, and theories of change. The aim here is not agreement but the kind of clear-eyed dialogue that makes working alongside difference possible.
About the Guide
“Navigating Food Systems Transformation” was produced by Food System Innovations (FSI), a philanthropy that builds, funds, and invests in market-based solutions to accelerate the transition to sustainable proteins. FSI works as both a funder and an operator, implementing programs directly while supporting others through grants, investments, and capacity building.
The guide was co-authored by Kelly McNamara and Max Elder, with research conducted by Thomas Legge, an independent consultant specializing in food systems philanthropy and policy.
For questions, feedback, or to discuss current and emerging field-level efforts, contact Kelly McNamara, Director of Climate & Nature, at Kelly.McNamara@FSI.org.
Photo credit: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution