Our VISION is a regenerative food system that is climate smart, healthy, fair, and affordable.
Our MISSION is to catalyze action, provide expertise, and deliver policies to create food system change from soil to plate.
Roots of Change works to unify diverse elements of the good food movement. We collaborate with farmers, ranchers, processors, community-based organizations, universities, policy makers, philanthropists, and food movement and public health leaders to knit trusting relationships, align strategic goals, and priorities. We conceive transformative actions, and attract the resources needed to effectively plan, organize, and execute campaigns and projects that create systems change.
Our STRATEGY to catalyze food system change is based on four activities:
- THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
We identify intervention points to propose new ideas, projects, and policies for our current and potential allies, and policy makers who share our vision. We engage in research, publish reports and opinion editorials, develop innovative funding proposals, and dialogue with those who can influence the evolution of the food and farming system. A key to our success is our ability to attract a diverse ecosystem of collaborators who work with us to implement projects and new policies. - POLICY AND ADVOCACY
We develop policy proposals and advocate for policy change. We have been pioneers in the realm of nutrition incentives and central players in local, state, and national policy campaigns that have transformed public investments to support healthy food access, regenerative and organic agriculture, and protections for farmworkers. Our trusted relationships with local, state, and federal policymakers have been another key to our success. - DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS
We assemble teams of collaborators to implement demonstration projects that show how to scale up and accelerate change. In collaboration with a wide array of allies including our partner programs within the Public Health Institute, we formulate, fund, and lead or co-lead impactful projects. We help farmers and ranchers make agriculture healthy, resilient, and profitable; protect farmworkers from the mounting impacts of global warming; increase access to healthy food for our most vulnerable communities; and expand local and regional food system infrastructure. - OUTREACH AND EDUCATION
We educate the public to raise food system literacy and inspire conscious purchasingdecisions that drive needed change. We use our website, social media, newsletter, podcast, and public events to educate and motivate those we touch. We invite them to join us in making change and offer ways to act. The purchasing and voting power of the public is required t aid our mission and achieve our vision. People power is needed to temper corporate power.
Roots of Change is a program of the Public Health Institute.