A New Blueprint for a Resilient Food System
With family farms in the US disappearing and rural communities left behind by agricultural consolidation, how do we rebuild a food system that actually works for everyone?
2026 McNulty Prize Winner Tom McDougall, Founder of 4P Foods (Food Leaders Fellowship), is tackling this challenge head-on by building a regional food hub that connects hundreds of small farms directly to schools, hospitals, and communities across the mid-Atlantic, cutting out the layers of middlemen that leave farmers with just pennies on the dollar.
Having grown a network that moves fresh, locally grown food to hundreds of thousands of people, including food-insecure families and 176,000 students a day, the 4P Foods team is now working to scale this model further and make the case that food systems built on fairness and resilience — not just efficiency — are possible everywhere.
