Foster & Gather

What is Foster & Gather?

Foster & Gather^TM is a collective of food-system leaders working to increase our shared understanding of the landscape of farm and food-system transitions, identify best practices for improving our efficacy, and organize our efforts to accelerate the end of factory farming. It brings together values-aligned decision-makers and technical experts representing sectors across the U.S. food value chain, from farmers to food manufacturers, foundations and investors to retail executives, and supply chain managers to researchers.

Together, we will work to hasten the end of factory farming and the shift toward a more sustainable and ethical food system by developing actionable solutions and collaborating on a strategy that furthers our individual goals, tackles our collective bottlenecks, and addresses systemic problems created by our unsustainable food system.

Foster & Gather comes to life both as a recurring, in-person event and through virtual activities that ensure the continued progress of our work to speed this transition. Our success depends on your participation and will yield effective solutions toward the creation of a food-production ecosystem with these fundamental attributes:

• Ethical
• Profitable
• Culturally sensitive
• Respectful
• Sustainable

Our Why

The end of factory farming is necessary to avoid the most dire climate outcomes. Equally important is ensuring that solutions are both equitable and inclusive. Our world is already coping with extreme weather events, wealth inequality, loss of biodiversity, and ongoing human conflict.

Pastoral landscapes of rolling hills filled with bees, butterflies, roaming animals, and fresh produce—this is what people envision when they think of farms. The reality is that close to 99% of farmed animals in the United States are raised at factory farms. These operations are responsible for a significant portion of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, contribute to deforestation through the clearing of land for grazing and growing feed crops, and damage waterways with nutrient runoff from the millions of tons of manure generated annually. When this manure is spread onto fields, it can also lead to the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the soil and cause heavy-metal contamination due to metal used in animal feed. But the problems factory farming causes stem from multiple factors that may not be directly connected to farms:

• Ingredients a food manufacturer chooses
• Food a restaurant, a retailer, or an institution offers
• Ways food is subsidized, marketed, sourced, and valued
• Research and innovation investments
• Access to living wages and benefits like health insurance or a retirement plan
• Policies and laws that regulate agriculture’s impact on land, air, water, and animals
• Consumer knowledge about how their food is produced