Nutrient Value Chain

What do we mean by the Nutrient Economy?

Ashoka’s work with leading social entrepreneurs has led to a keen insight and massive opportunity.

Being fully nourished as a person –– and therefore increasing your likelihood of being physically and cognitively healthy –– requires that you consume a diverse mix of nutrients, in forms that your body can absorb. If you are not fully nourished, your body and brain cannot develop at high or even sufficient capacity; you are not as productive as you could be in the home, school, and workplace; and you do not resist sickness and disease as effectively as you could. At the same time, this mix of nutrients plus the other food and conditions that makes them “bio-available” to the body is often lacking, both in people’s diets and in the broader food and agriculture systems which supply those diets.

Emerging business models and technologies show, however, the incredible potential of reorienting health care, food systems, and agriculture around full nourishment. We think a focus on bio-available nutrients and wellness outcomes in people, food, and land (instead of the more typical focus on food inputs and sickness), can produce remarkable results within and across sectors of society. We see increases in infant health and capacity (setting the stage for lifelong success) and in the body’s ability to fight disease, increases in individual and workforce ability to learn and in their productivity, shifts towards regenerative rather than extractive agriculture, and expansion rather than depletion of the natural ecosystems that enable much of the nutrient creation and maintenance to begin with.  Additional layers of benefit should also begin to accrue, such as local community and regional resilience in the face of economic and environmental risks, increased carbon sequestration and retention in soils, and more.

This is what we mean by the nutrient economy.

In one form, it suggests a new frame for understanding the driving forces within and between food, health, agriculture and the environment, and also drivers of success in workforce and community employment systems. Focusing foremost on full nourishment of people, food and land reveals clear and distinct priorities for action.

In another form, it suggests a specific and powerful value chain built around bio-available nutrients, threading from environment through agriculture and food to human health, which provides an explosion of opportunities for economic and social transactions.  Ideas now being explored by Ashoka’s teams, for example, include “nutrient banking” in landscapes, approaches to bio-available nutrient measurement as a basis for valuing and transacting in this economy, and emerging, exciting technologies for measuring and computing pathways to full nourishment in people, food, agriculture and land.

Contact:  Charlotte Hastings, chastings@ashoka.org