U.S. Food Systems Infrastructure Lab
Bringing organizations across the food systems ecosystem together to strengthen regional work and build shared social, technical, and financial infrastructure.
16 Fellows | Cross-Regional Implementation & Learning | Field-Level Infrastructure
From Regional Innovation to Shared Infrastructure
Across the country, farmer cooperatives, food hubs, Tribal food sovereignty initiatives, regional networks, research institutions, community lenders, and other food systems leaders are developing practical approaches to strengthen farm viability, market access, land and ecological stewardship, regional coordination, and access to technical assistance and capital.
While these efforts respond to the distinct needs and opportunities of their regions, many encounter similar barriers—and are developing approaches that could benefit others working across the country.
The U.S. Food Systems Infrastructure Lab creates a space to connect this work: supporting organizations in advancing their own priorities while identifying recurring needs, sharing promising approaches, and exploring what becomes possible to build together.
What becomes possible when strong regional approaches have better ways to learn from, resource, and build with one another?
How the Lab Works
The Lab begins with the priorities of participating organizations and expands outward: connecting individualized support with peer learning, shared design, and pathways to implementation.
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Strengthen
Individual Workplans + Tailored Support
Each Fellow develops an individualized work plan shaped around its priorities, with tailored implementation guidance, technical assistance, and support from Open Future Coalition and aligned partners.
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Connect
Peer Learning + Open Impact
Fellows learn and problem-solve across regions while using Open Impact to coordinate work, share resources, document learning and impact, and make projects and opportunities more visible.
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Build
Shared Design + Co-Development
Common challenges and opportunities surfaced through the Lab inform the development of shared resources, workflows, measurement approaches, technical tools, market-enabling solutions, and other common infrastructure.
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Resource
Capital + Implementation Pathways
The Lab connects emerging needs and opportunities with aligned resources and partners, while Contextual Capital Labs provides a complementary pathway for projects requiring deeper predevelopment, capital readiness, and financing support.
Meet the fellows
The inaugural U.S. Food Systems Infrastructure Lab cohort brings together 16 organizations working across different geographies, scales, and parts of the food systems ecosystem—from producer networks and regional conveners to researchers, technical assistance providers, capital partners, land and ecological stewards, and national networks.
Together, they represent both the diversity of approaches already strengthening regional food systems and the opportunity to connect those efforts through shared learning, infrastructure, and investment.
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Agricultural Platform Collective
Agricultural Platform Collective brings together organizations working to strengthen regional food systems in California, with a particular focus on producer support, market access, and shared capacity. Through the Lab, APC will continue exploring opportunities for stronger coordination and capital pathways across the Central Valley and beyond.
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION MARKETS NETWORKS + COORDINATION NATIONAL + FIELD INFRASTRUCTURE -
American Sustainable Business Network
American Sustainable Business Network brings together businesses, investors, and other economic actors working toward a more sustainable and equitable economy. Its participation brings a national business and policy perspective to questions of market development, financial infrastructure, and the conditions needed for regional food systems to thrive.
NATIONAL + FIELD INFRASTRUCTURE REGULATORY + POLICY MARKETS -
Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFED)
CoFED is a cooperative movement builder creating a food economy powered by the visionary leadership of young queer, trans, Black, Indigenous people, and people of color. Through training, community grants, and solidarity networks, CoFED supports cooperators and farmers advancing food and land justice. Its work seeks to transform an extractive system into one rooted in healing, relationship, and collective liberation.
COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE LAND ACCESS + STEWARDSHIP CAPITAL + INVESTMENT -
Del Norte & Tribal Lands Community Food Council
Del Norte & Tribal Lands Community Food Council brings together producers, Tribal communities, institutions, and other partners to strengthen the food system of California's far north coast. Its work demonstrates the importance of regional coordination, food sovereignty, and approaches shaped by the ecological and cultural context of place.
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION NETWORKS + COORDINATION LAND ACCESS + STEWARDSHIP ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE -
Federation of Southern Cooperatives
For decades, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has strengthened Black farmers, landowners, cooperatives, and rural communities across the South. Its work spans cooperative development, land retention, technical assistance, advocacy, and market access—offering a powerful model of infrastructure built around the long-term needs of producers and communities.
COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE LAND ACCESS + STEWARDSHIP REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION MARKETS -
Foodshed Capital
Foodshed Capital provides flexible financing and business support to farms and food enterprises, helping address the gap between the capital producers need and the financing traditionally available to them. Its participation brings an important practitioner perspective on how financial tools and technical support can better serve regional food economies.
CAPITAL + INVESTMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION -
Foodshed Small Farm Cooperative
Foodshed Small Farm Cooperative is developing farmer-led approaches to aggregation, distribution, and market access for small and historically underserved producers. Its work, rooted in San Diego County, offers a practical example of how cooperative infrastructure can help individual farms access opportunities that are difficult to reach alone.
COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT MARKETS REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE -
Glynwood Center for Regional Food & Farming
Glynwood strengthens regional food and farming through farmer training, market development, regional collaboration, and stewardship of working lands. Its work demonstrates how physical, social, and ecological infrastructure can work together to support viable farms and a thriving regional food economy.
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE MARKETS LAND ACCESS + STEWARDSHIP ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE CAPITAL + INVESTMENT -
Hudson Valley Food Systems Coalition
Hudson Valley Food Systems Coalition connects organizations working across the region to strengthen collaboration, align resources, and address shared food-system priorities. Its participation brings experience in the connective infrastructure required to move from many strong individual efforts toward greater regional coordination and collective impact.
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION NETWORKS + COORDINATION RESEARCH + LEARNING -
Local Seed Coalition
Local Seed Coalition works to strengthen seed systems, biodiversity, and farmer knowledge as foundations for resilient agriculture. Its participation brings an important ecological dimension to the Lab, highlighting the role of locally adapted seed, biological diversity, and farmer-led knowledge in the long-term health of food and farming systems.
ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE RESEARCH + LEARNING NETWORKS + COORDINATION NATIONAL + FIELD INFRASTRUCTURE -
Locus
Locus helps communities put capital to work in ways that build local wealth and strengthen place-based economies. Its expertise in community finance and investment brings an important perspective to the Lab's exploration of how capital can better align with regional priorities and support the infrastructure communities need.
CAPITAL + INVESTMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION -
Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems
The Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems advances resilient and equitable food systems through applied research, education, partnerships, and practitioner resources. Its participation brings deep experience translating knowledge across research and practice and supporting learning among food-system leaders working in different contexts.
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION NETWORKS + COORDINATION RESEARCH + LEARNING REGULATORY + POLICY -
Platform for Agriculture + Climate Transformation
Description goes here
MARKETS ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE CAPITAL + INVESTMENT
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Rogue Valley Food System Network
Description goes here
REGIONAL IMPLEMENTATION TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE MARKETS LAND ACCESS + STEWARDSHIP ECOLOGY + RESILIENCE CAPITAL + INVESTMENT
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Small Farms Research & Innovation Center at North Carolina A&T State University
Description goes here -
The Farmers Land Trust
Description goes here
Growing what the field needs, together
The Lab isn’t built around a predetermined set of solutions. As Fellows work on their own priorities and learn across regions, the cohort creates an opportunity to identify recurring needs, document approaches that are working, and determine where shared tools, resources, or investment could help those approaches travel further.
The Open Impact platform provides one foundation for that work: a shared digital environment where Fellows can coordinate projects, document learning and impact, exchange resources, and make emerging opportunities more visible. Over time, that shared learning can also point toward other forms of common infrastructure—from workflows and measurement approaches to market-enabling solutions, financing mechanisms, and other resources that are more useful when developed together.
Contextual Capital: From shared learning to shared investment
Many promising food and land initiatives struggle not because of the underlying ideas or execution, but because conventional funding and finance fail to meet them where they are—or aren’t structured for the early work required to move complex, place-based projects toward implementation.
Contextual Capital Labs complements the Infrastructure Lab by creating a pathway for projects that need deeper predevelopment support, capital readiness, and more context-aware approaches to financing. Working alongside enterprises, intermediaries, and capital partners, the Labs help clarify what a project needs to move forward, strengthen its pathway to investment, and explore financing structures better matched to its context.
Our first Contextual Capital Lab is now launching in the Southeast, working with regional enterprises and capital partners to put this approach into practice.
Why this lab, why now?
Across the country, communities are already building the pieces of stronger regional food systems: farmer cooperatives and food hubs, new approaches to land access and stewardship, regional markets and supply chains, technical assistance networks, community finance, research partnerships, and new forms of coordination.
What we’ve seen, through our work with organizations in the U.S. and around the world, is that many of the strongest ideas are already here. What is often missing is the connective infrastructure around them: the time and resources to document what is working, learn across regions, adapt promising approaches, coordinate across organizations, and invest in the shared tools and systems that no single organization should have to build alone.
The U.S. Food Systems Infrastructure Lab emerged from that recognition. Rather than beginning with a prescribed national model, we’re investing in the people and organizations already doing this work, and creating the conditions for regional knowledge, relationships, and solutions to become a stronger shared foundation.
This is long-term work. Shared infrastructure requires sustained investment—not only in individual projects, but in the relationships, tools, knowledge, coordination, and financial pathways that allow many efforts to become stronger together.
We invite funders, practitioners, researchers, investors, and other partners who share this vision to help us grow what comes next.