Blogs

When it comes to food systems transformation, we believe that multiple visions of the future need to exist across geographies, sectors, and scales, and that they must reflect the reality of local needs and circumstances. If we attempt to determine simple, linear “visions,” this will only lead to top-down siloed approaches to solution-making and leave broken food systems intact. As we anticipated this critical year in the decade of action on climate and the environment, we wanted to better understand what our peers, partners, and networks were thinking when it comes to charting the way forward for future food systems.Read More

For the last 25 years, design, planning and evaluation have been dominated by the mandate that interventions be based on a theory of change. In January 2020, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food transcended the theory of change approach by formally adopting a theory of transformation. This conceptual breakthrough comes at a critical time when, in the face of the global climate emergency, the need for transformation has become the clarion call of our times.Read More

The Global Alliance welcomes the launch of Michael Quinn Patton’s new book: Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles. Featuring the Global Alliance as one of the world’s first adopters of this landmark method of developing and evaluating systems change initiatives, it has profound implications for any organization or network working to create a more sustainable, equitable future in the midst of the climate emergency.Read More

The McKnight Foundation has supported the first of the Blue Marble Evaluation innovators — from Michael Quinn Patton and the World Savvy team, to the evaluators embedded in the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and the Collaborative Crop Research Program. This initial Blue Marble Cohort has learned from each other, challenged each other, and is actively providing critical tools and frameworks for the field. Writing on the day of the launch of Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles in Minneapolis, Jane Maland Cady, Program Director, International – McKnight Foundation, explains that the work has only begun and why it’s important to use this approach to evaluation to address the critical challenges facing our one and only planet.Read More

Writing on the day of the launch of Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles in Minneapolis, Claire Nicklin, Representante Regional for the McKnight Foundation, shares her thoughts about how Blue Marble has provided the Collaborative Crop Research Program with important ideas and concepts that can help us understand complexity and guide action.Read More

Blue Marble Evaluation is at the leading innovative edge for evaluation for the times we live in. Drawing its name from the first photograph taken of Earth from space in 1972, the power of this approach to evaluation lies in taking a global systems “whole-Earth” perspective, helping to design and support transformational efforts by generating insights for adaptation and enhanced impact. As a trans-disciplinary profession, evaluation has much to offer global change interventions that work toward a sustainable future across national boundaries, sectors, and issues. The book – Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles, by Michael Quinn Patton – places evaluation at the center of this context.Read More

This year’s fires in the Amazon, the worst in recent years, are a stark reminder of the challenges of producing plenty, affordable, and healthy food for a growing and more affluent world. Today, almost all of the soy that Brazil exports goes to emerging economies like China, the rest to the European Union and other developing markets. There, buyers convert soy to animal feed which, in turn, helps grow meat locally (mainly pork, chicken, and beef).Read More

We need to understand how the climate and food system communities can collaborate more at this critical time and catalyze new ideas. We need to identify where the opportunities are, and, indeed, how we can overcome the shared challenges we face. These are just some of the issues we’ll be addressing at our (sold-out) Climate Crisis and the Future of Food event in NYC this September.Read More

The Global Alliance is pleased to announce the creation of a new platform of collaboration called “Allied Initiatives.” Global Alliance Allied Initiatives are aligned yet independent funder collaborations housed strategically and practically under the umbrella of the Global Alliance. Allied initiatives are strategically aligned and committed to food systems transformation, which are funder-led, principles-based, and time-bound in their goal for immediate, maximum impact.Read More

The Global Alliance is delighted to welcome Instituto Ibirapitanga as the newest member of the alliance. This Brazilian foundation supports organizations and initiatives that work to strengthen democracy and defend civil liberties in Brazil in two main areas: racial equality, fighting racism and the system of racial inequalities that structures Brazilian society; and food systems, developing a healthy, just and sustainable food system.Read More