As the world's population and consumer demand continue to grow, there is urgent need to improve human health, prevent disease, and meet basic needs for food, water and shelter equitably for all people. The challenge of our time is to meet these goals as population increases while protecting the environment, preserving biodiversity, and conserving finite resources to meet the needs of future generations.

CLF Concept Model

Within CLF’s program areas — farming, eating and living for our future — we are engaged in three principal activities: research, educational outreach, and community action. All of our work is driven by the concept that diet, health, food production, the environment, population and equity are all elements of a single complex system, illustrated here in the CLF Concept Model. Change to one element invariably affects the others, sometimes in unpredictable ways.

The interaction between diet and health is receiving significant attention in recent years and a growing body of work is developing about human-generated environmental hazards that impact the health of communities. Less studied and documented is how our industrialized food production systems impact human health and the natural environment. Population growth worldwide and growing disparities between rich and poor imbue our work with a sense of urgency to find solutions and inform public policy.