Institute for Food and Development Policy (Oakland, Calif.)

Food First, also known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California, US. Founded in 1975 by Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, it describes itself as a "people's think tank and education-for-action center". Its mission is "to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger". According to the Food First website, its main goal is to forge food sovereignty for human rights and sustainable livelihoods, and to do so it has three programs of development: building local agri-foods systems, farmers forming food sovereignty, and democratizing development. The organization is meant to offer policy analysis on poverty, agriculture, and development, and is highly critical of the policies implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The organization focuses on the Green Revolution which was supported in the 1970s and which did not produce the development people hoped for. Instead it put in place a system that has high input-costs, but does not produce a yield much higher than traditional farming methods. There has been a recent resurgence of Green Revolution ideas, especially with the large-scale support of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and high-yield-variety agriculture. Food First claims that these policies will only further global inequalities, and has produced several policy briefs stating that the way to establish fair and effective development is through local sustainable agriculture. In 1987, the organization received the Right Livelihood Award "for revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them."