Food For All
Platform 2035

St. Louis was built from the land up — fed by rivers, rooted in farmland, and home to one of the most diverse food cultures in the country. For generations, neighborhoods across the city have grown, shared, and celebrated food as a source of survival, joy, and belonging.

Our local farms, kitchens, and markets deliver a vast array of foods that nourish every culture, every dietary need, and every way of life. Without a doubt, our food ecosystem is rich in cultural expression and culinary innovation.

Today, St. Louis sits at the heart of America's agricultural corridor. We are surrounded by farmland and research institutions, with more than one thousand plant scientists and hundreds of biotech companies based in our region. And yet, for too many of our neighbors, the abundance of nourishing food remains out of reach.

Our food system — though rich in knowledge, culture, and innovation — is deeply fragmented, systematically inequitable, and structurally unreliable. Despite our proximity to farmland, research, and technological advancement, 1 in 6 city residents — and 1 in 3 children — still lack consistent access to affordable, nourishing food.

This is not an accident. It's the result of decades of disinvestment, discriminatory land use, extractive economic development, and reactive policymaking. Today, instead of repairing harm, our food system reinforces the racial, economic, and geographic disparities that define life expectancy, health outcomes, and educational opportunity across our region.

Those most impacted include Black and Brown families, immigrants and refugees, disabled and chronically ill residents, formerly incarcerated individuals, low-income and no-income communities, children, and elders.

These systemic failures don't just lead to hunger — they fuel higher rates of diet-related diseases, chronic stress, poor mental health, underperformance in schools, developmental delays, and intergenerational poverty.

What we are witnessing and experiencing is not a food access issue alone — it is a failure of governance and infrastructure. And it is an invitation to rebuild: to imagine how becoming a city where nobody experiences hunger creates the conditions for neighborhood stabilization, regional economic prosperity, long-term upward mobility, and generational advancement.

The right to food is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, and is enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Furthermore, the right to food has been recognized in several international conventions. All human beings — regardless of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status — have the right to adequate food and the right to be free from hunger.

The right to food is more than having access to a clinically-defined minimum ratio of calories, proteins, and other specific nutrients. It is a right to all nutritional elements that a person needs to live a healthy and active life, the means to access them, and the affirmation of foods that tell the stories of our cultural identities.

And, within our nation, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has defined food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life."

To transform our food ecosystem, we must transform how we govern, invest, and co-create solutions.

We believe the future of St. Louis lies in community-driven, cross-sector, multiracial, multigenerational, and transpolitical coalitions — uniting residents, growers, scientists, food entrepreneurs, organizers, artists, policymakers, and corporate leaders in a shared vision of health, sovereignty, and justice.

Together, we must:

By doing so, we align with the call from the United Nations Food Systems Hub: making food systems more equitable is necessary for the sustainability of our food systems and for the wellbeing of people, particularly those most vulnerable. Transforming food systems under a changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss demands action from all actors — building agency and capacities of the underrepresented, changing power relations in formal and informal spheres, and confronting harmful and discriminatory norms embedded in structures that systematically privilege some groups over others.

We recognize that lasting social and economic mobility — and St. Louisans living long, nourished lives — is about more than food. We must also address education, workforce development, childcare, healthcare, immigration, housing, and other issues that impede or enhance mobility.

This platform builds on a decade-plus of work, thought, and learning by communities, researchers, and advocates — namely the seminal 2014 report For the Sake of All. It was shaped by what we heard directly from St. Louisans — grassroots, grass-tops, and tree-tops — across workshops, briefings, polls, surveys, lunch and learns, think tanks, and individual conversations carried out over 2024 and 2025, culminating in our "Food For All" book. Supplementing this outreach was an extensive review of policy recommendations and plans developed over the past decade by food and health organizations, and best practices from around the nation and world.

We know the path to a thriving, just, and resilient food ecosystem is layered, generational, and deeply entangled with broader political, economic, and social systems. That's why our approach centers the power of local solutions — designed with and by the people most impacted.

In a fractured federal and state landscape, we focus on what we can do here — together. Our platform advances six interconnected priorities so that residents, growers, workers, and communities can:

The Food for All Platform is not a rigid checklist. It is a living document — a blueprint rooted in justice, designed to evolve through community leadership, continuous learning, and responsive action.

While it lays out a bold vision and ambitious pathways for transforming St. Louis' food system, it recognizes that the conditions, assets, and power dynamics of our region will shift over time. The platform is intentionally structured to provide strategic guidance — not absolute mandates.

We honor that transformation must be led by those closest to the issues. A core responsibility of the Food for All Advocate will be to map assets, identify leverage points, and adapt strategies in partnership with residents, growers, food workers, and system stakeholders.

A phased approach honors the organizing principle that transformation moves at the speed of trust. It allows for learning and adaptation, responsiveness to community feedback, progressive wins, effective stewardship of cross-sector investments, and continuous monitoring.