Regional Food Systems
Our food systems reflect some of the 21st century’s most pressing challenges, but also offer significant opportunities to address them.
America’s industrialized and massive-scale agricultural system contributes to climate change, water scarcity and pollution, food-borne illness, antibiotic resistance, loss of wildlife and habitat, obesity and other disease and food insecurity.
Creating new, regional and sustainable food systems can help address many of these cross-cutting concerns while ensuring the most vulnerable among us – children, the poor and people in hospitals – are getting the healthy food they need to thrive. We’re supporting such a regional food system in New England by:
- Channeling demand from our region’s largest food purchasers such as schools, colleges and universities, and hospitals to increase the economic success of sustainable agriculture;
- Focusing on supply chains to expand and streamline the supply and demand of regionally and sustainably produced food; and
- Strengthening food production and distribution systems so they can meet the growing demand.
Grantee Profile
Migrant Justice
“Milk with Dignity will bring about a new day for dairy workers. We will transform this industry and win our human rights.” – Enrique Balcazar, Migrant Justice Farm Worker Member*
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Impact Investing
Ayers Brook Goat Dairy
In 2012, The John Merck Fund joined philanthropic partners, The Castanea Foundation and the High Meadows Fund, to form Evergreen Partners, L3C, committing $300,000 to the partnership to help finance Vermont Creamery’s ...
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Impact Investing
Fair Food Fund
In 2012, The John Merck Fund Board made a $425,000 investment in the Fair Food Network’s Fair Food Fund-Northeast. The Fund was established to help fill the financing gap that many smaller-scale sustainable farmers ...
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Recent Regional Food Systems Grant Awards
| Date | Description | Program Area | Focus | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12/2021 |
Pleiades NetworkTo develop possibilities for improving leadership transition processes for small farm and food system nonprofits, and generate ideas for how to keep these leaders involved and advancing the sector. |
Regional Food Systems |
$25,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
Cooperative Development InstituteTo preserve the viability of New American farmers and food businesses in Maine and the Connecticut River Valley, particularly as COVID persists; and to raise the profile of cooperative ownership in the regional food system. |
Regional Food Systems |
$25,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
Migrant JusticeTo support the Milk with Dignity campaign, which works to broaden the definition of sustainable food production to include the dignity and rights of workers, and transform the dairy industry through worker-driven social responsibility that compels dairy brands to ensure respect for human rights in their supply chains. |
Regional Food Systems |
$40,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
Massachusetts Farm to SchoolTo ensure that all Massachusetts students have access to high quality, culturally relevant meals featuring local food and to food education in school. |
Regional Food Systems |
$25,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working GroupTo catalyze meaningful change toward a sustainable and just food system through policy outreach and education, peer learning, collaborative partnerships. |
Regional Food Systems |
$45,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
Red TomatoTo implement improvements in the organization’s internal structure and workplace culture, and advance the “Bypass” project through experimentation, product development, and increased sales. |
Regional Food Systems |
$35,000 | |
| 12/2021 |
CommonWealth KitchenTo advance its building purchase and continuing market development initiatives to drive more local, diverse procurement and contracts from food service operations. |
Regional Food Systems |
$45,000 | |
| 09/2021 |
Real Food GenerationTo build sustainable food systems through campaigns on college and university campuses, and to grow the broader movement for healthy, just, and sustainable food by bringing people together through in-person and digital organizing. |
Regional Food Systems |
$55,000 | |
| 06/2021 |
National Family Farm CoalitionTo strengthen NFFC’s movement building and policy advocacy by influencing the planning, media coverage, and content of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit in New York City. |
Regional Food Systems |
$25,000 | |
| 06/2021 |
Food ConnectsTo increase inter-food hub transactions and sales, while also building more efficient systems and envisioning the future of New England food hub networks. |
Regional Food Systems |
$45,000 |