About Grassroots

Our food system is functioning very badly in many places, at the consequence of nature, food species and humans. Our current food system is not sustainable (we deplete our resources and our lands), not healthy (we have more obese people in the world than not), not resistant (we lose climate and pest-resistant species through monocultures across all types of foods). And then there are problems with fairness, equality, availability and affordability.

In Grassroots, we will conduct an economic experiment. If the current economical logics brought us in this situation, we must turn to alternative logics to get us out. Minimum Viable Ecosystems (MVE) are groups of actors that are committed to materializing a value proposition at the ecosystem level. Not the individual interest is served through collaboration, but a joint interest. If done well, this allows for collaborations that serves each actor in the group, not through direct investments or commercial relationships, but through producing value that serves the ecosystem as a whole. Just like nature is organized.

As consortium partners and an expanding group of actors we aim to build a few MVEs from the ground up.
Our topics of interest are:

• Contributing to a climate-resilient food production network.
• The unused potential of food wastefor food consumption.
• Contributing to finding a balance in the chain of (alternative) proteins .
• Building healthy food landscapes around cities.

We are grateful to the trust given by the ClickNL in the Power of Design & Transitions program to support this project.