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ALLFED

Feeding everyone  
no matter what

ALLFED

Feeding everyone
no matter what

What ALLFED does

We are the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). We seek to identify various resilient food solutions and to help governments and companies implement these solutions to feed everyone in the event of a global catastrophe. We focus on events, such as supervolcanic eruptions, which could deplete food supplies or access to 5% of the global population or more.

“Resilient foods'' and “resilient food solutions'' are what we call the foods, technologies and systems that could help everyone survive a global catastrophe that shocks the world’s food systems. Our ultimate goal is to feed everyone, no matter what. An important aspect of this goal is that we need to establish equitable solutions, so that all people can access the nutrition they need, regardless of wealth or location.

ALLFED focuses on research, resilience, and response, and is developing financial products and models to increase resilience to global catastrophic food risks.

Research

We research the production, affordability, funding, and distribution of several resilient food solutions, such as the scaling up of greenhouses, the production of food from wood or leaves, and more. We consider how and where catastrophes might occur, who would be impacted, and how to fund and implement solutions. Learn more about our research here.

Resilience

Building resilience enables communities, countries, and continents to withstand food shortages. We work with policy experts, researchers, other NGOs, members of industry, financial organizations, and governments to help them identify and implement strategies that strengthen resilience and preparedness at national and global levels. 

Response

Having an established, yet flexible, response to a catastrophe is necessary for resilience. Responses include traditional solutions, such as UN relief or social security in a pandemic, and also innovative solutions, such as specialized insurance payouts, scaled-up greenhouse production, and industrial-scale resilient foods that could feed billions of people.

In the years leading up to 2020, governments were repeatedly warned that a global pandemic was likely. Yet when COVID-19 struck, the world was largely unprepared.

Moreover, the pandemic had side effects and exacerbated other problems in ways that were poorly anticipated. For example, in Africa and the Middle East, illness and lockdowns occurred just as massive locust swarms were decimating crops, resulting in even greater food insecurity for tens of millions of people. Even in North America and Europe, where there was no risk of food shortages, people stocked up on so much food that supermarkets ran out of many staples.

As tragic as COVID-19 has been, the risk of even greater catastrophes in the coming decades is quite high, and food shortages caused by these catastrophes would be deadly.

If food production and distribution were disrupted, there are currently no alternatives, no back-up plans to ensure survivors can still access the nutrition they need. If a catastrophe occurs that is large enough to reduce food production by 5% or more, then loss of food will likely kill far more people than the catastrophe itself directly.

The ALLFED mission is to help create resilience to global food shocks. 

We seek to provide practical, affordable, and resilient food solutions so that, in the event of a global catastrophe, governments, industry, and communities can respond quickly and distribute food equitably, saving lives and promoting the continuation of global cooperation. 

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