Zero Foodprint Asia: Turning Diners into Active Participants in Solving Climate Change, One Bill at a Time

Imagine this. You’ve just eaten a filling, delicious meal in a lovely restaurant. Once the last dessert plates and wine glasses have been cleared away, the bill arrives. As you scrutinize the price, you notice that 1% has been added to your bill. The money will go to farmers, exactly the type of people who grew the food you ate tonight. Would you notice, or care? Zero Foodprint Asia (ZFPA) is banking you won’t notice—and if you do, you’ll have a positive reaction.  

ZFPA’s flagship initiative offers an agricultural climate solution that drives systemic change in the food system. Participating restaurants and other food businesses add 1% to the customer’s bill, which they pledge to ZFPA to be pooled into the organization’s Restore Fund. On an annual basis, farmers can apply for this funding to support their transition to regenerative agriculture practices. According to the initiative, the 1% pledge is the only table-to-farm solution in Asia, driving collective, systemic change by reaching a far-reaching audience, and is the most direct and scalable mechanism to support a sustainable shift in the food economy. 

According to the initiative, the pledge is designed to be simple for restaurants to implement, requiring no material change to operations or management, leveraging a restaurant’s existing business vehicle to promote the solution and raise funds from diners. This brings wealth back to the soil through a table-to-farm mechanism, directly allowing restaurants and consumers to help grow better food, support thriving farms, and restore our climate. ZFPA specifically focuses on restaurants because, they state, the food and beverage industry is the third most reliant on natural resources. 

Once enough money has been collected in ZPFA’s Restore Fund, it is distributed as grants to specific farms. Regenerative Farming (RF) agronomists are assigned to monitor, measure, and evaluate each farm’s progress throughout the project period, and ZPFA publishes regular updates. The project period is typically 12 months, during which the main objectives are capacity building (through training and knowledge sharing) and the replacement of materials and techniques. Projects prioritize the improvement of soil health from day one. The Restore Fund helps smallholder farmers withstand pressure from large agro-chemical industries, and allows farmers to transition to regenerative practices that address food security and nutrition, enhance farmer prosperity, and reduce the system’s vulnerability to climate risk through improved soil health—especially pertinent in Asia, where 70% of all food is grown by small-scale farmers. 

According to the initiative, in their first three years of operation, they’ve been able to fund 25   farm projects in five locations (China, Hong Kong, Bali, Philippines and Thailand). Collectively, that accounts for more than 1,500 farmers and over 5,000 impacted farming families. More than 50 restaurant partners and over 90 supporters or donors have signed on and pledged to ZFPA, and they’ve reached over 1.2 million consumers (through the 1% on their bill). Check, please! 

Learn more about Zero Foodprint Asia.

Written by Sara Souli
Photos provided by Zero Foodprint Asia

Instead of burning the byproducts of rice crops captured after harvest, regenerative rice farmers in Bali use dried up rice stalks to create compost that returns as nutrients in the paddies.

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