Guillermo Castilleja is a Senior Advisor at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Guillermo’s time has been generously allocated by his foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to help the Global Alliance further its work on true cost accounting. Before being seconded to the Global Alliance, Guillermo, in his position as senior fellow at the Moore Foundation, advised the president on both internal analytics and external relations – providing foresight and judgement to aid in identifying future directions, as well as opportunities to elevate the foundation’s and grantees’ achievements. Guillermo served six years at the helm of the foundation’s Environmental Conservation Program, leading its efforts to protect critical ecosystems and balance long-term conservation with sustainable use.
Before joining the foundation in 2010, Guillermo worked for WWF for 18 years, most recently as executive director for conservation at WWF International. In that capacity, he directed and coordinated its global conservation efforts, leading the development of place-based and policy priorities for the global network. At the beginning of his career in WWF, he was country representative in Mexico and later vice-president for the Latin America and the Caribbean program. Guillermo has also worked for the World Bank and the National Wildlife Federation. He serves on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) Advisory Board, and the board of the Fondo Mexicano Para La Conservacion De La Naturaleza, A.C./Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, A.C. (FMCN). He was recently appointed special advisor to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. Previously, Guillermo was a member of Mexico’s National Commission on Protected Areas and the National Forestry Commission, as well as the board of directors of WWF Russia. Through speaking engagements around the world, research published in peer-reviewed journals and the media, Guillermo has addressed the relationship between protected areas and food security, strategies for long-term financing of large-scale land conservation, and the social opportunities and challenges of biodiversity conservation. Guillermo graduated from the National University of Mexico and received a master’s degree in forestry, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a doctorate in forest ecology from Yale University.
There are many people doing incredible work globally to improve various food systems but too much of it is siloed within specialized frameworks, vocabularies, and languages, This work is disconnected from others and, therefore, not supportive of wider, systemic solutions. A group of food experts and designers have been devising a visual language to unite various food system stakeholders across the world in order to improve this communication and collaboration. The first phase of this process is complete, outlining how to complete a vastly larger system that transcends languages. In order to complete this system, the Foodicons Challenge will a crowdsourced competition to collaboratively design a large system of open-source icons of key food terms and concepts and frameworks that can be used globally by professionals and consumers, alike.
When we started this project, our hunch was that various popular food frameworks were not so different, despite their vocabularies. At their heart, most food frameworks and initiatives work with the same elements and have compatible goals. In addition, work around the world in every community relies on clear communication that often needs to transcend language. The global food supply cycle touches so many regions, people, and stakeholders, that any one language isn’t enough to communicate throughout. We don’t expect a visual language system to solve every communication challenge but we expect that it can ease communication and comprehension and help people understand how disparate efforts and approaches support similar goals and outcomes.
The goals of this project include:
While the first audiences for this system are those in the industrial and commercial parts of food systems, we do expect these icons to be used by many other groups—right down to eaters and other food consumers. From farmers, marine farmers, and those throughout the agriculture and aquaculture industries, to food businesses, restaurants, certifiers, and consumers, consistent communication is an obvious ideal. Constructing a viable system, however, is not without its challenges.
First, our food systems are vast and spread all over the planet. Supple cycles are long, encompassing all kinds of growing, raising, processing, transportation, packaging, and markets. In addition, some stakeholders use different terms to differentiate their offerings, whether this confuses users or makes things more clear—or both, simultaneously. It’s no surprise that terms are misunderstood at all levels.
However, our initial investigations and prototypes have proven to us that visual languages can help, even if not exhaustively. The discussions that these symbols provoke, alone, have been valuable in illuminating expertise from different people and sectors.
Our next step is to use the learnings from our prototype and launch the first round of the challenge to designers worldwide. It will likely take two, three, or more rounds of challenges to fill-out the iconographic system to meet the needs of so many stakeholders but the process for each challenge can be the same.
How big does the Food icon system need to be and how many terms need to be represented?
There is no easy answer to this question. The Food Clarity activator team assembled a list of over 1000 terms pertaining to food systems, and this list is hardly complete, given that some researchers have identified nearly 10,000. In exercises used to prioritize these terms, it became clear than many are more useful than others and 500-600 terms is a sweet spot for communicating the most important processes, elements, and even ingredients to global, commercial supply cycles.
Our aim is to launch the food icon challenge in rounds of 200-300 terms. Within just a few challenge rounds, we should have a cohesive visual inventory allowing the vast majority of food professionals to communicate the bulk of their needs.
Food historian and futurist, with a concentration in the history of urban food markets, particularly in Western Europe during the 19th century. Why does a historian think about the future of food? It’s all about context, having the knowledge about how we got here as we think about the future. Am particularly interested in the use of technology to improve and re-invent the global food supply chain.
Food+City tells stories through print and digital platforms, sparking thoughtful conversations and inspiring change in the global food system. For five years, F+C encouraged entrepreneurs to solve food system problems with an annual challenge prize, working with over 75 food startups and $250K in funding. Currently, the focus of Food+City is to contribute meaningfully to the global food system by highlighting important stories, creating excellent content, and continuing to champion other entrepreneurs improving how the world is fed. .
Other highlights and interests include: researched, wrote, photographed for four consumer interest books, wrote three non-fiction books, consulted for companies, big and small, about electronic publishing strategies, founded non-profit educational farm, participated on a dozen non-profit and for-profit boards, managed and developed boards of directors, planned events, solicited grants, donations, traveled to remote areas of the world, speaking two foreign languages in addition to English. Holds culinary certificates in cheese, Cordon Bleu (London). Produced and marketed heritage food products. Learned how to butcher and aspire to be a cheese affineur.
Beyond professional passions, I love living large, and am an accomplished athlete, having completed ultramarathon races across six global deserts. Also appreciate storytelling and the arts, and expressing myself through painting, drawing, film, and many other creative mediums.
We’re seeing major challenges in the design of global food systems. The concept of optimization through specialization will be reconsidered in the future. We now question our dependence upon global sourcing as pandemics shut down entire regions and international trade in favor of feeding local populations. Increased automation in the industrial food system could improve worker safety, public health, and access. The ideal is a fully resilient and redundant food sourcing system that can rapidly respond to changes and threats to the food system.
Currently, specialized food systems, such as the plant-based supply chain or the meat protein supply chain, do not have a language for communicating with each other. Those designing a new, integrated and resilient food system, need a neutral, yet precise tool for conveying the activities within their own separate supply chains.
New communication tools can bridge different supply chains for the purpose of creating more resilience, adaptability, and traceability in a world of rapid change. Consumers need to know how to make their own food choices while having a complete understanding of the practices and impacts of the food they are consuming.
Dan is an entrepreneur experienced in sustainability, startups, and international trade. His endeavors over the last 20 years include launching a natural snack company, heading a logistics firm, opening a restaurant, and managing a creative agency. He holds a degree in Business Management from Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana and an MBA from Babson College. As Managing Partner, Dan pursues strategic opportunities for New Crop Capital’s portfolio companies.
I regularly have conversations with people from so many different perspectives (academic, corporate, government, lobbyists, etc.) and I’ve learned that before we try to fix something, so complex, we all need to talk about it in similar ways. The biggest distance in understanding is between players of different sizes: a coffee grower in Costa Rica and a multinational like Starbucks, for example. Their fates are intertwined but there is a complete imbalance in the relationship. Both need to exist and both need to speak with a common understanding of the larger context they work within.
Language is a marketing tool and lots of ingredients have completely different naming paths. Shared definitions and visual language are opportunities for governments to reset the ground rules to communicate more effectively. Because of such large investments in capital needed for new solutions and because Asia has such large populations—and less affluent ones—they are taking the lead.
People have forgotten where their food comes from and this isn’t just inner-city children that may have never been to a farm. Consumers need to own-up to the fact that they play a big part in what is being served and their focused actions can help create a more healthy supply chain, etc. At the same time, we’ve lost a degree of respect for farmers and those that work the land. I didn’t have much understanding of farmers, myself, until I set-up a natural snack company many years ago. The current food system has put them into a situation where they have to compete with factory farms or move increasingly into small niches. Most people aren’t willing to pay premiums for better, healthier food but they will pay much higher prices for specialty items, like fine chocolate, or when they understand the differences in origin, quality, health, flavor, etc. So, anything that helps them to better understand the food systems, will help them make better choices as well as support better food outcomes throughout the supply chain.
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