Welcome to the 3nd issue of the Good Food Fund Newsletter!
The Good Food Fund, established in 2017, is a special fund under the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation. Our focus is promoting the transformation of a healthy and sustainable food system in China. In the 2nd issue of "Good Food Newsletter," we hope to share the latest news of Good Food Fund and China's food system with you.
The year 2020 has been an eventful year. The epidemic which started from food made us more responsible for raising public awareness of eating good food. In the last quarter of 2020, we sucessfully held the 4th online Good Food Summit. Our Mama's Kitchen project, which won the Rockfeller Foundation's 2050 Food System Vision Prize, took one step further. The Good Food Initiatives also had its unique logo design......
Now we have entered 2021. Facing all the challenges brought to us by this highly unstable age, we hope that we can all be more resilient and be able to change crisis into advantage for growth, and transform through the challenge. In 2021, the Good Food Fund will keep walking with you.
Please feel free to forward this email to individuals and organizations who may be interested. If you have any ideas, you can also contact us direct.
Good Food Updates
| We will participate in the preparations of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit |
UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene the Food Systems Summit in October 2021 with the aim of changing the way the world produces and consumes food in order to advance the implementation of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It is a summit to present food system solutions, a process for all stakeholders to identify and develop best practices in food system transformation.
The Summit is running parallel on five Action Tracks: "Ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all"; "Transforming to sustainable consumption patterns"; "Promoting production that has a positive impact on nature"; "Promoting equitable livelihoods"; and "Building resilience against vulnerability, shocks and stress".
Jian Yi, founder of the Good Food Fund, joined the core team of the Action Track 2 - "Shift to Sustainable Consumption Patterns" and is leading AT2's Work Stream 1 on Food Environments. He is currently the only Chinese national leading a work stream in the action tracks.
With the support of the leadership team of the Summit and other parties, the Good Food Fund is actively planning to establish the China Action Hub of AT2, so as to encourage Chinese people from all walks of life to take joint actions, deeply participate in the governance of the global food system, and contribute China's solutions to the world.
In addition, the China Action Hub will also look for best practices of food system transformation in China. If you have recommendations, please send them to us.
Good Food Footprints
| Welcoming 2021: Out successful Earth Relay, spanning 20+ time zones around the world and attracting 650,000+ views |
The year 2020 has been a very special year in human history. We all have our "2020 story" to tell. As the year 2020 comes to an end, and the last decade of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals is set to begin, we launched the "2020 Farewell Dinner, Earth Relay" as a special end-of-the-year editon of the "Mamas' Kitchen" live broadcast.
We invited more than 60+ scholars, artists, farmers, chefs, community organizers, children and elderly, from 20+ time zones, to join the relay on Dec. 31, 2020 and show the dinner plates of their last meal of 2020 to bid it a propoer goodbye and welcome the New Year. They also explained why they chose to eat these, how they made it, as well as their thought on future diets. Here's some of our participants:
During this marathon online relay, our audience had seen Peter Singer sharing a Mapo Tofu he just cooked and his thoughts on our relations with animals; the legendary Korean Buddhist nun Ven. Jeong Kwan preparing temple food; children in Chengdu, China, presenting the local special food they cooked; elderly from a rural ethnic minority community in Southern China singing a folk song for the New Year, amazing chefs from the Chefs’ Manifesto, including three women chef-restaurateurs in India, sharing their foods and wishes; farm owners from Nepal and Texas sharing their philosophies on and approaches to food; chefs from New York, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Jamaica presenting their plant-forward dishes; a Polish activist cooking one of her late grandpa’s favorite dishes (he taught her how to cook); and of course we heard the incredible Maori wisdom in the first time zone and learned about the remarkable Mama’s Food Forest in Hawaii in the last …..
Thanks to support from Baidu.com, China Net and China’s National Internet News Center, we attracted the attention of an overall of 650k+ people for the livestreams, despite competitions from many other New Year shows taking place at the same time. We have thus set a new bar for drawing crowds to events on Food System Transformation, breaking a previous record of also set by our 4th Good Food Summit 2020 (viewed by 340k+).
It is the belief of us here at the Good Food Fund that for those of us who are privileged enough to make our food choices, we must make the right choice. Thanks to all of you, this successful Earth Relay has shown exactly that and we hope that this people-to-people dialogue, this solidarity of the peoples and all the good energy and wishes for a better future will all come together to make Year 2021 a promising one for us, all earthlings and future generations.
We look forward to working with many of you again in 2021.
| The Fourth (Online) Good Food Summit has come to a successful end |
On October 28 - 29, 2020, the 4th Good Food Summit was successfully held online. A total of 58 Chinese and international activists, scholars and industry partners were invited to share their experiences in transforming our food systems. The summit was broadcast live through Baidu. Up to 17:30 on October 29, the summit has attracted a total of 345,000+ people to its livestreams. That makes the summit one of the top ten most watched Baidu livestreams of the day. The fact that so many people are interested in the transformation of the food system shows that people are paying more attention to the food issues in the wake of COVID-19.
During the summit, we introduced new good food initiatives that will be launched in 2020: the WET Market Transformation Initiative, Mama's Kitchen (a winner of the Food System Vision Prize 2050), Edible China, as well as the 2030 Target, which focuses on one of the major causes of the current environmental burden - the overconsumption of meat, and aim at reducing China's overall meat consumption by 30% and increasing high-quality, diverse plant-based food intake by 30% by 2030. The initiative invites people around the world to join and create the 2030 Target framework, and will officially launch the framework and prizes to award best practices in the next summit.
Focusing on the theme of "transforming to a more sustainable and more resilient food system", activists and scholars spoke from various perspectives on the urgency for a food system transformation. We also invited organizations and individuals home and abroad to share their experiences on transforming the food system.Their practices are documented by the first edition of The Good Food Report, which was launched during the summit.
The Fourth Good Food Summit is our first try to hold a summit online. Next year we will keep exploring new approaches to present the summit. Please stay tuned.
Summit playback
| Good Food Mama's Kitchen have finished 4 Episodes |
Having been recognized as a finalist for the Food System Vision 2050 Prize, the Good Food Mama's Kitchen team experimented to turn the vision into reality. We have now finished recording 4 episodes of mama's kitchen and have a Wechat public account dedicated to the initiative. Search “GFF妈妈厨房”on WeChat and follow us there.
Each of the four episodes focuses on one aspect of the Good Food Pledge and invites guests to create innovative plant-based dishes with Lee, our Good Food chef as well as to interpret the meaning of the theme of each episode.
The theme of the first episode was food education. Chef Lee and the guest chef went to local tofu workshops and eco farms to learn the stories of food production. During the dinner party, they shared what they had learned with the guests.
The theme of the second episode was "local and seasonal". Two chefs went to local markets, picked mushrooms in the mountain, visited local farmers and famous ecological farms in Dali, looked for regional and seasonal ingredients and impressed the guests of the dinner party with the natural flavor of food.
The theme of the third episode was healthy diets and the guest chef was Wang Juan. This episode focused on snacks for children. Two chefs proved that "good taste" and "good health" are compatible. We also invited Andrew Nicholls to comment upon the health risks of local snacks and to recommend some recipes for healthy snacks. His comments received many positive responses from the audience (click here to see playback). A few days later, Andrew gave a speech on healthy diets for moms, see playback here.
The fourth episode, with the theme of "Sunstainability and Cicularity", was recorded during the Yunnan Sustainable Conference. Chef Lee and guest chef Ruizi learned about the practices in agricultural production that are consistent with the "Sunstainability and Cicularity" principle of the Good Food Pledge, and finally presented their work at the Yunnan Sustainable Conference Market.
The recording of the four episodes of Mama's Kitchen is considered as the pilot stage of the Mama's Kitchen. Next, we will review and summarize the gains and experience brought to us by the four episodes, and integrate the constructive opinions of all parties to start the second stage of exploration of Mama's Kitchen. Follow our Wechat public account and let us know what you think.
| The Handbook for a WET Market Revolution (Summary Report) was released in Suzhou Design Week |
The food market is the major source of healthy and fresh foods for many people. It connects the community and also supports the livelihoods of small farmers.Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the future of the food market has been widely discussed. The food market is faced with the challenge of risks of increased zoonotic deseases, as well as the opportunity of transformation.
To this end, the Good Food Fund launched the WET Market project to reform food markets and improve urban food environment. On November 3rd, the Handbook for A WET Market Revolution (Summary Report) was released in a pop up event co-organized by the Good Food Fund and Slow Food Great China at Shuangta Market, as a part of Suzhou Design Week.
"Wet market" is a terminology that refers to food markets in many parts of the world, notably some Asian countries. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, wet markets in China has got bad press. To reform wet markets, the Good Food Fund has a new interpretation of W-E-T: Well-Being, Ecology and Transformation. In our vision, the future WET Markets should be "Good Food Hubs" that catalyse healthy, just, sustainable and resilient urban food systems.
The Handbook presents the vision, design guidelines and best practice examples for a WET Market revolution. Co-creating partners of the Handbook include Slow Food, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, OPEN Architecture, SDG2 Advocacy Hub, Meatless Monday, Grassroots Initiatives, as well as experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Imperial College London, China Agricultural University, Department of Urban Renew Planning and Design at Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Planning and Design Institute, Eastern Africa Grain Council.
The full text of the Handbook is expected to be released in early 2021.
The Good Food Fund is reaching out to communities and relevant stakeholders to look for practical opportunities to take forward the project to improve food environment, promte food culture and food education, and foster good social governance.
During the pop-up event at Shuangta Market, participants were asked to buy "ugly" vegetables and fruits, broken tofu from the fresh produce vendors, taste plant-based meat, and use reusable shopping bags in order to complete missions and collect stickers of the Good Food Pledge logos. Good Food Chefs Jun and Lee collaborated with the snack vendors to cook delicious plant-based dishes using the "ugly" ingredients that would otherwise be thrown away. In addition to advocating for reducing food loss and waste, the event also aimed to promote the interaction between market managers, vendors, residents, chefs, non-profit organizations and other stakeholders, so as to explore more possibilities of the food market.
The event was widely reported by China Media Group and many other media channels. The livestream had more than 70,000 views.
| The Launch of Good Food Pledge logos |
Launched in April 2019, the Good Food Pledge outlines eight major areas the public can support sustainable food transformations and aims to serve as a framework for change in the food space similar to the UN SDGs to global sustainable development. The eight major areas include Plant-Forward, Animal Welfare, Healthy Eating, Reduce Waste, Local Seasonal, Circular Economy, Preserve Biodiversity and Food Education.
child version
Designed by Li Wanyu, the logos brings the Good Food Pledge to life. With these logos, the Good Food Fund together with organizations that have signed the Pledge will be able to convey the core values of the Pledge better to the general public. We are also developing toolkit to support individuals and organizations to follow the Pledge.
| The Good Food Fund was invited to participate in the SDG Open Innovation Marathon of Tsinghua University |
The 2nd SDG Open Hack organized by Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Coordinating Committee, X-lab of Tsinghua University and other organizations, was held at the end of November. There were 20 Hacks. Hack 4 "Future Design of Eating" attracted the most participants.
For Hack 4, during the symposium one week before the Hackathon, Ms. Melinda Hou, Excutive Director of the Good Food Fund, was invited to speak on the topic of food as the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth. She also introduced the work of the Good Food Fund to promote dietary and food system transformations in China.
In the Hackathon on November 28 and 29, which lasted 24 hours in total, ten participating teams worked on innovative ideas to address different challenges in the food system. They sharpened their solutions through communications with the mentors and three rounds of pitch.
Mr. Ouyang Huiyu, the Food Policy Officer of the Good Food Fund, was invited to participate in the Hackathon as a mentor and judge. He also delivered a speech to introduce the WET Market project. One team chose this topic to work on and has won the award for Social Innovation Team. They designed an operation mode which integrate pre-cut vegetables processing in the wet market and deliver them to those individual-operated restaurants in need in the area that the wet market covers. The solution aims to address the challenge of high labor costs and food loss due to the the lack of pre-cut vegetable supply to individual-operated restaurants. It will also bring diversified buyers to the wet markets given that the wet markets usually serve only some certain groups of consumers (mainly middle-aged and elderly people), which makes it difficult for them to sustain in the competition with supermarkets and internet companies.
| Good Food Fund was invited as a judge to participate in the course "Sustainability Consciousness" at Tongji University |
On November 11, Cecilia Zhou, the Chief Project Officer of the Good Food Fund, attended as a guest judge the final report of the course "Sustainability Consciousness" for junior students at the College of Design and Innovation of Tongji University. This course aims to help students to improve their awareness of sustainability issues and their mindset of systematic thinking, to provide insights into the overlooked truth in their daily life, to train their ability of finding levers in design intervention and to lay the foundations for their design practices addressing sustainability in the future.
Twelve groups of students presented their designs covering various areas including clothing, food, accommodation, transport, culture, waste recycling, etc. Among them, one group explores how vending machines affect university students' eating habits. This design is a key entry point for understanding the eating preferences of university students, and it also inspires us to carry out more collaborations and launch joint initiatives with universities in the future, to bring the consciousness of good food to university students by sustainable design.
| The Good Food Fund was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on "Vision and Innovation in a Time of Food Insecurity and Crisis" |
On November 13, Weng Welli, Research Director of the Good Food Fund, was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion on "Vision and Innovation in a Time of Food Insecurity and Crisis" hosted by SecondMuse and Thought for Food. The conference focused on the impact of COVID-19 on different parts of the world and how to nurture entrepreneurs/changemakers with vision and leadership to work together to create resilient and equitable food systems.
Click here to watch the roundtable discussion.
| We made a short film of Wuhan for EAT@Home Livestream |
On November 18, a short film of Wuhan made by the Good Food Fund was presented in a livestream of EAT@Home "Shifting to Sustainable Consumption", giving many audience their first glimpse of the city's recovery. Click here to watch the EAT@Home episode.
| China Food Dialogue: Bold Actions for Food as a Force for Good |
On November 23 and 24, the World Economic Forum held an online summit with the theme of "Bold Actions for Food as a Force for Good". A sub-forum of the summit "China's Food System at a Critical Time: Vision and Solutions" was organized by Tianren Culture. Jian Yi, the Founder and President of the Good Food Fund was invited to share how his organization engaged multiple stakeholders to promote systematic transformation at several levels.
Prof. Fan Shenggen (former director of International Food Policy Research Institute), Victor Koo (Founder of Tianren Culture), May Mei (Founder of GoalBlue) and Matilda Ho (Founder of Bits X Bites) also shared their insights in the sub-forum. Action ideas generated from the dialogue will be taken forward in the process of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.
Click here to read the recap of the dialogue.
| We hosted the first expert seminar on the 2030 Pledge |
In this first year of the 2020s, we hope to bring together all stakeholders caring for human health and ecological sustainability so we can unite our efforts to make the 2030 Goal a reality: we want to increase the nation's overall consumption of high-quality, biodiverse plant-based diets by 30% by 2030, replacing 30% consumption of current animal-based foods. At the same time, we will keep improving animal welfare, enhancing public health, ecological sustainability, food security, biodiversity, and the resilience of food systems and human civilization.
On December 4, the Good Food Fund successfully hosted the first expert seminar on the 2030 Pledge. We invited renowned experts from home and abroad, including Dr. Seth Cook (Associate at the Food and Land Use Coalition, FOLU), Mr. Zhao Haijun (FOLU China Project Manager), Ms. Sara Farley (Managing Director of Food Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation), Ms. Aahana Dhar (Regional Communications and Media Lead of Asia at the Rockefeller Foundation), Prof. Martin Bloem (Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future), Prof. Kevin Chen (Chair Professor of China Academy for Rural Development at Zhejiang University, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute), and Ms. Edwina Hughes (Head of Engagement for the Cool Food Pledge at the World Resources Institute).
The seminar was moderated by Mia McDonald (Executive Director of Brighter Green) and Weili Weng (Research Director of the Good Food Fund). The participants had fruitful discussions on the content, scope and implementation mechanism of the 2030 Pledge, shared their insights and provided valuable advice for our work in the future. Special thanks to FOLU for their strong support of the 2030 Pledge and this seminar!
| Business Involvement: the Good Food Fund Assisted Meituan to release the first Sustainable Restaurant Guide of the industry |
On December 3rd, under the guidance of the China Hotel Association, Meituan released the first Sustainable Restaurant Guide of the industry, outlining 13 action recommendations under four key areas: sustainable packaging, sustainable ingredients, sustainable operations, community support and public welfare actions. The Guide aims to help the catering industry achieve sustainable development. As an Industry Co-initiator of the Guide, the Good Food Fund has been actively involved in the development, feedback and promotion of the Guide. We hope this Guide will catalyse a healthy and sustainable transformation of the industry!
Click here to get the guide
| Good Food Fund's involvement in other events |
In the last quarter of 2020, Jian Yi, the Founder and President of the Good Food Fund, presented the work of the Good Food Fund at the first Hult Prize China Symposium on October 10, the International Farm Animal Welfare Fellowship on November 7, and the Animal Advocacy Conference Asia on November 12.
On December 4, Jian Yi spoke to the BBC about China's renewed campaign to reduce food waste this year. Click
here to listen.
On December 5, Jian Yi was invited to speak at the Conferece on Interdisciplinary Food Studies of Sun Yat-Sen University on the topic of "What's Under the V-ism Label - Good Food in the 2020s". Other speakers shared their research on many interesting topics including the market of organic food, the adaptability of sustainable food system in the local context and its practical solutions, the causes of food waste in vegetarian restaurants, and the future of new vegetarianism.
| The Good Food Fund accepts four interns from the Notre Dame University |
In partnership with the virtual Global Professional Experience (vGPE) program of Notre Dame International, the Good Food Fund accepted four undergraduate interns from the University of Notre Dame in early December. The program is aimed to provide the students with valuable professional experiences that contribute to their development of global perspectives and career-building skills. The four students have different backgrounds in biological sciences, mathematics and statistics, economics and visual communication and share a common interest and passion in sustainable development and food system issues. Mentored by our colleagues, they are participating in the promotion of the UN Food Systems Summit and the Farewell Dinner Earth Relay event.
In addition, the Good Food Fund is recruiting interns from home and abroad. Through internship we help youth gain deeper understanding of and get involved in key issues of food systems. Please recommend intern to us via email (info@goodfoodchina.net) if you happen to know young people who aspire to make a difference in food space in China.
The Good Food Recommendation
| A documentary that gives people hope: Kiss the Ground |
Kiss the Ground, a documentary that explores agriculture and climate change, is available on Netflix on September 22. Different from other environmental documentaries which expose the dark side and emphasize the severity of a problem, Kiss the Ground reveals a solution in a way that regenerate people's hope. The solution could have significantly impact on addressing climate change but somehow negelected - by regenerating the world's soils, we can completely and rapidly stabilize Earth's climate, restore lost ecosystems and create abundant food supplies.
Carbon neutrality is a focus of the documentary. It refers to achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions by balancing carbon dioxide emissions with removal or simply eliminating carbon dioxide emissions altogether. Afforestation (to increase carbon sink) and the use of renewable energy (to reduce emissions) are both effective ways to achieve carbon neutrality. President Xi Jinping announced China's ambitious 2060 carbon neutrality goal in an address to the UN General Assembly.
Kiss the Ground demonstrates a simple and cost-effecitive intervention to sequester carbon, regenerative agriculture, which will transform the world's farmland into significant carbon sinks.
Thanks for your interest on our work. Wish you a wonderful year in 2021!
