We have so much to share with you in the coming months about our work to fight factory farming and “build the good” — food systems that work for animals, people, and the planet. In the meantime, we thought that we would share our top four highlights from January.

The event included representatives from Congress, the USDA, national food system advocates, and community-based organizations working to build better food systems. Together, we explored two topics: universal nutritional security and sustainable farmer opportunity. At the end of the day, these are essential elements of food systems — to nourish each other, and to ensure future generations can do the same. Yet today’s food systems fail these basic goals. Plants and plant-based foods can help build both universal nutritional security and sustainable opportunities.

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The Eva Clayton Rural Food Institute brought together more than 200 people, from policymakers to farmers and funders to workers, to discuss shared priorities. Farm Sanctuary was thrilled to attend and to learn from these critical conversations. Farm Sanctuary partners with the Eva Clayton Rural Food Institute as part of our “SHIFT” approach. This entails how we, as a national organization, can shift resources, whether through policy or directly, to support the community-driven organizations already building more just and sustainable food systems.

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We’re thrilled to welcome two new team members to Farm Sanctuary’s advocacy department: Rohini Banskota, Sr. Manager of Strategic Advocacy Initiatives, and Miranda Eisen, Outreach and State Policy Specialist. Rohini and Miranda join Alexandra Bookis, our Senior Manager of U.S. Government Affairs, and Aaron Rimmler-Cohen, our Senior Director of Advocacy.

Together, we work across our 100+ person organization and with outside partners to pursue bold solutions that end animal agriculture and “build the good” — compassionate, just, and sustainable food systems that work for animals, people, and our shared environment. These bold solutions include changes to policy and shifts in resources to support supply chains that nourish without harm.

These team members join as we begin to publicly reintroduce our approach to advocacy — one that, as Farm Sanctuary’s President and Co-founder Gene Baur says, “meets people where they are to build the good for all of us.”

Food is at the heart of what so many people care about — whether health, sustainability, social justice, vibrant rural and urban economies, or animal well-being. Today’s food systems operate more like factory farms than ever before. They prioritize production over all other shared priorities. As a result, they fail nearly all of us: animals, people, and the planet.

We can work together, across movements, to shift public and private investments to advance shared priorities. In doing so, we can work toward the long-term reduction in the number of animals in the food system supply chain.

We can also shift resources to support the community-driven organizations that have been working to build more just and sustainable food systems for decades. Together, we can build food systems that serve essential social and environmental purposes — to nourish all people without harm, and to ensure that future generations can do the same.

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