This landscape maps innovation across the food value chain and where IAF’s impact thesis intersects. It highlights headwinds like climate change, population growth, and 30–40% U.S. food waste, alongside tailwinds from AI/IoT, vertical farming, and alternative proteins (pp.5–6,7,10–13). Beneficiaries include food-insecure minority households—22.5% of Black and 18.5% of Hispanic households—who face access gaps and are overrepresented in lower-wage food roles with limited leadership opportunities (pp.16–17). Impact levers span waste recovery, alternative production/delivery, and future-of-work pathways in food, with explicit short-, medium-, and long-term strategies and community-oriented evaluation criteria (pp.22–26,28–30). Estimated needs include a 69% increase in global calories by 2050 and recovery of wasted calories and dollars domestically (pp.6–7). Next steps focus on localization, last-mile delivery, job skills/training, and ownership-enabling supports for small producers (pp.29–30).
Some Identified Companies
- Bowery: indoor farming to bring fresh produce to urban environments, aligning with access/localization (p.10).
- Shipt: tech-enabled grocery delivery expanding last-mile access (p.12).
- Goodr: redistributes surplus food, targeting food waste recovery for food-insecure communities (p.13).
Notable Investors
- Horizons Ventures: featured in alternative protein/clean meat theme (p.10).
- S2G Ventures: backing emerging food brands and system innovation (p.11).
- Andreessen Horowitz: cited within packaging/waste recovery themes (p.11).