Shifting Food Systems: Accelerating Impact through Collective Action

Over the past year, Synergos, in partnership with Tsao Pao Chee, Stone Barns Center, and A Growing Culture, brought together more than 120 global leaders on a learning journey — listening deeply directly from smallholder farmers, movement leaders and practitioners, as they examined the question "what can we do together, that we cannot do alone?"

The learning highlights of 2025 are documented here: https://www.synergos.org/global-philanthropists-circle/food-systems-group.

In January 2026, members of the community convened near the ancient city of Uxmal in Yucatán, Mexico, where they identified three key systemic leverage areas for transforming food systems:

Elevating Local Solutions Grounded in Traditional and Indigenous Wisdom: Centering all life, recognizing that food is medicine, culture, and the foundation of life, and acting in ways that benefit seven generations.

Youth Engagement in Agri-Systems: Equipping young people with the leadership, agency, and dignified livelihoods needed to shape agri-food systems that they will inherit.

Catalytic Capital and Enterprising Models that Transform Food Systems: A world where farming is a dignified, viable livelihood, where farmers experience wellbeing, fair compensation, and freedom from extractive cycles of debt.

See photos and highlights from this trip by clicking here!

We welcome GPC members who are interested to be part of a learning and action community shaping the future of food systems in these areas. Please reach out to Melissa Durda at [email protected] and Ishwarya Subramanian at [email protected] for more information and to join the movement