Foodshed
The “farm-to-table” movement is focused on producing food locally within a foodshed, and delivering it to local consumers. Direct farm-to-table in the United States tends to comprise only a very minor segment of the food distribution system in terms of size and importance, but is growing in popularity.Nearly 5 percent of all farmers engage in some form of direct food marketing. Estimates of all farm-to-table sales within a foodshed range from roughly $550 million to $2 billion. Many local farms are family-run farms that are successful and do survive through poor economic conditions. Ecologists consider to be more adaptive and more likely to “reproduce” in highly variable and uncertain environments.
Board for International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD)
In May 2011, Feed the Future (FtF) held a forum that place a major emphasis on research, development of new technologies, policies, and a "whole government" approach to end world hunger. The forum would help Feed the Future identify research opportunities in their new stratify to combat global hunger, USAID and USDA partnered with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Board on International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) to convene a consultative process for engaging the US and international research communities to respond to the strategy and to identify research opportunities that support Feed the Future's research goals. An initial workshop was held at Purdue University in January 2011 to set the context for the discussion and frame a process. In May 2011 an e-consultation was held, followed by a stakeholder forum, convened in Washington DC in June 2011. This consultative process was designed to allow research stakeholders to further refine research priorities and identify opportunities for new ways of working in order to inform Feed the Future's research implementation efforts.