About LAUNCH Food
It’s hard to imagine a human need more basic than food, and yet today, nearly half of the world’s population lacks a nutritious diet. A growing chorus of stakeholders from across government, industry, academia and even consumers is calling for new design constraints to inform the design of a food system for the future. A future with positive environmental, public health and economic outcomes for urban and rural communities in both the developed and developing world. At LAUNCH, we unite that chorus of entrepreneurs and experts in action with those eminently affected by our current unjust and unsustainable food system.
We're on a mission
Today’s food systems require a fundamental transformation to meet human needs within the Earth’s limits. At LAUNCH, we love limits.
Limits inspire us to think creatively and act radically in order to make our food system accessible, sustainable, nutritious, and healthy. To grow a food system that serves all, we need to improve four fundamental areas of our current food system.
We need to feed more people.
With a projected 8.6 billion people by 2030 and a global middle class expected to grow to nearly 5 billion within two decades, the demand for agricultural products is estimated to increase by 110% by 2050.
We need healthier food.
For the first time ever, we’re experiencing the triple burden of malnutrition – undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies, and over-nutrition – considered the number one risk to health worldwide.
We need to produce food more responsibly.
Our food system is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change. Extreme weather events, pests, diseases, and rising temperatures are decreasing productivity, while agricultural emissions, intensive water use, and nutrient deficient soils are part of the cause.
We need to take care of food workers.
The people who grow the food we eat– the farm workers, fishers, and producers– are valued the least. Human rights abuses, poor working conditions, and child exploitation is rampant throughout the supply chain in both developed and developing economies.
Meet the LAUNCH Food partners:
I feel really well supported. I’ve been battling away on this project for three years, and now I’m in a process where a lot of it is curated with me. For me, personally, once I was in the LAUNCH community, I felt that this was real.
Major pluses are connections we’ve received through the LAUNCH program. The new thinking we’ve been able to inject into our business. Meeting people on a global scale that we wouldn’t be able to get access to.
The people in the development world and in the private sector don’t always know how to have conversations with one another because in many ways we speak different languages. But what we’ve found through LAUNCH and what we knew to be true before is if we can all get on same page and start to speak same language of understanding a problem, then we can work together to solve that problem.
LAUNCH Food Challenges
LAUNCH Food
LAUNCH Food is a global open innovation program for innovators, entrepreneurs, or intrapreneurs with big ideas for improving health outcomes by enabling people to make healthy food choices.
LAUNCH Legends
LAUNCH Legends is a new initiative aimed at promoting healthy eating and better nutrition in Fiji and Tonga through the use of emerging, interactive education and storytelling technologies.
LAUNCH Health
LAUNCH Health was a call for innovations that are preventive with a focus on nutrition, exercise, and health care.