Impact Investors Living Lab - About
About the Lab
In 2022, the Food Trails project invited experts, investors and financial actors to participate in the Investors Living Lab, together with the project’s partner municipalities. Through monthly meetings and exchanges, the Investors Lab addressed 8 themes to explore insights and experiences on specific topics linked to impact investing in urban food systems, and to help shape the production of a “Roadmap” for impact investment in urban food systems.
The Food Trails Impact Investors Living Lab addressed the following themes:
- Impact – defining impact and how to achieve it; (February 2022)
- Ambition – purpose and goals rooted in a transition to sustainable food systems; (March 2022, April 2022)
- Data – data and information necessities, informing decision-making; (July 2022)
- Policy – policies and regulations enabling change; (July 2022, January 2023)
- Products – financial services, consumer products, shaping value chains (investment and process readiness); (September 2022, October 2022)
- Scaling – innovation beyond local actors; (February 2023)
- Capacity – financial literacy together with wider community (webinar); (December 2022)
- Community – functionally improve food systems at citizen level (webinar). (March 2022)
Meetings and Webinars
Find an overview calendar and Summary Briefs of the Investors’ Lab meetings from February 2022 to March 2023 here.
The Roadmap
The principal outcome of the Food Trails Investors Living Lab is a Roadmap for Scaling Impact Investment in Urban Food Systems.
The document aims to address practical areas for enabling and facilitating expanded flows of investment for healthyand sustainable food systems, in Food Trails cities and other urban communities.
This Roadmap aims to bring an investment perspective to urban food policy, acting as a resource for municipalities and other urban food systems actors to integrate impact investment in food systems and policymaking, and enable investable opportunities as well as sustained partnerships.
Go to The Roadmap for Scaling Impact Investment in Urban Food Systems
Future Work
The Food Trails Impact Investors Lab produced a Roadmap for Scaling Impact Investment in Urban Food Systems, providing strategic and practical insights to city-level food systems, value-chain actors, and investors. This document will contribute to ongoing Food Trails work and outcomes, such as policy briefs.
The work of the Lab will transition into a Cities workstream within the Good Food Finance Network. This will allow for connecting the Roadmap, and the work of participating cities and investors, to the Integrated Data Systems Initiative and the emerging Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation. goodfood.finance
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all Investors Living Lab participants, including municipalities, innovators, researchers and investors, who shared their experiences, knowledge and priorities on the topic. For more on the authors and contributors of the Roadmap, please see the Acknowledgements section of the document.
