About Us

Learn about our members and staff.

The Sustainable Food Lab is a consortium of 70 businesses and social organizations from three continents.  The mission of the Sustainable Food Lab is to accelerate the shift of sustainable food from niche to mainstream in order to ensure a healthy future for the planet and its people. 

We define a sustainable food system as one in which resources (including natural resources such as soil and water, as well as human resources such as labor) are used at their rate of recovery. As a result, the fertility of our soil is maintained and improved; the availability and quality of water is protected and enhanced; biodiversity is healthy; farmers, farm workers, and all other actors along the supply chain have livable incomes; the food we eat is safe and promotes our health; businesses can thrive; and the carbon and energy footprints of production are within the within the limits scientists correlate with relative safety. 

What we do

Test and develop new ideas. We learn by doing. Partners come together in the Sustainable Food Lab to try out new ideas not with papers and reports but with live, on-the-ground, pilot projects so that theory and practice can interact. Our work centers around three research-action cluster areas: poverty alleviation through new business models, climate change and re-regionalization.

Measure outcomes. Sustainability can be hard to measure, but what can be measured can be incentivized to grow. Through 2009 and 2010 the Sustainable Food Lab and its partners are developing key impact indicators by which we describe and measure sustainability, an assessment of the state of sustainability in food systems, and an analysis of gaps in progress and what else would be needed, beyond voluntary market initiatives, to address these gaps between what is being accomplished and what needs to be accomplished.

Share the learning. The Sustainable Food Lab’s learning environment was designed by systems thinking, U Process, and team excellence experts associated with MIT and the Society for Organizational Learning. Lab members share stories and case studies and learn together at summits and learning journeys in  the field. 

Provide an innovation space for system leaders. Nobody can manage the whole food system alone. The Sustainable Food Lab is a global network for the sharing of expertise and development of working partnerships.

What you can do:

Membership and participation in the Lab has steadily grown since 2004. You can participate in meetings and engage in partnerships to improve supply chains and develop standards.

Read our FAQ, view slideshows about the Food Lab, and learn more about the Lab's history.

Learn more about membership and contact us about having your organization join the Food Lab.