The Wallace Center at Winrock International is promoting regional, collaborative efforts to move food “beyond the direct-marketing realm into larger scale markets” so that more producers and community economies benefit. Ultimately it seeks to employ a new system to connect more people to healthy, green, fair and affordable food.
The Wallace Center has been promoting and supporting a more sustainable food and agricultural system in the United States since 1983, employing research, policy analysis and education to facilitate change. In 2000, the Center joined Winrock International, strengthening its potential to foster food systems change.
It engages in these activities to promote such change:
- Building links within a diverse and growing network of food and farm innovators with meetings and communications that bring participants together.
- Strengthening this network by gathering, creating, and sharing knowledge.
- Supporting the process of change by monitoring the emergence of useful models and helping others adopt or adapt them.
- Working to deliver financial resources and other capacity building support to good food innovators.
Wallace Center projects include The National Good Food Hub Collaborative, City Food Sector Innovation and Investment and Increasing Farmer Success in Local Food Markets. Its Pasture Project began with the goal of improving water quality in the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico where harmful algal bloom and hypoxia conditions in the Gulf are largely attributed to nutrient runoff from conventional agriculture in the Upper Midwest. As the project developed, The Wallace Center turned more focus to soil issues, and it began to develop local partnerships to help promote education on sustainable farming practices. These projects and many more are covered in detail on their website.
