The EAT Foundation was created in March 2016, from three organisations: the Stordalen Foundation, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Wellcome Trust. Its ambition is to reform the global food system, enabling to feed a growing global population with healthy food from a healthy planet.

In its recent report "Valuing the SDG Prize in Food and Agriculture”, the Business and Sustainable Development Commission identifies 14 concrete business opportunities of which reducing food waste in the value chain, forest ecosystem services and low-income food markets are the three largest opportunities identified. Main conclusions from the report are:

• Business opportunities in the implementation of the SDGs related to food could be worth over US$2.3 trillion annually for the private sector by 2030. Investment required to achieve these opportunities is approximately US$320 billion per year.
• These 14 opportunities could also generate almost 80 million jobs by 2030, which represents around 2 per cent of the forecasted labour force.
• More than two-thirds of the value of the opportunities, and over 90% of the potential job creation, is located in developing countries. That includes roughly 21 million jobs in Africa, 22 million jobs in India, 12 million jobs in China, and 15 million jobs in the rest of Asian developing countries.

FReSH aims to respond to these calls with an action agenda for concrete measures. It is a platform for the private sector to achieve the required transformation in a safe and pre-competitive space in cooperation with science, academia, policy-makers, and civil society. The FReSH platform will focus on the following five work streams:

1. Developing guidelines on healthy and sustainable diets taking into account social and environmental considerations;
2. Food production adjustment, including formulation and offering to help achieve healthy and sustainable diets;
3. Food consumption reorientation to strengthen demand for healthy and sustainable diets;
4. Improvement of food sourcing and reduction of food loss and waste;
5. Measurement, reporting and communicating progress.

The launch of FReSH follows the joint initiative announced by WBCSD and the EAT Foundation in 2016 to create the “conference of parties” for food, in order to accelerate the transformation towards a healthy and sustainable global food system. 

Companies are invited to contact WBCSD's Program Director Fokko Wientjes for engagement opportunities and to learn more about the program. 

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Are you thinking of redefining parts of your business model? Or are you looking for concepts for partnering and sustainable innovation, please contact us at hello@finchandbeak.com for more information.