Unveiling PBFA's 2025-2027 Strategic Plan: Building a Sustainable Food Future
Today marks a significant milestone as we unveil PBFA and PBFI's 2025-2027 Strategic Plan – a comprehensive roadmap to guide the work of both organizations towards achieving our north star goals of growing plant-based market share, and harnessing the power of the plant-based foods industry to increase U.S. production and consumption of plant-based foods. While the path to achieving these ends is complex, the ultimate aim of our work is simple: to build a thriving plant-based industry that drives a sustainable food system.
The urgent need to shift our food system is clear. Climate change, public health concerns, and food equity are pressing issues that demand action, and plant-based foods provide an immediate, practical, and impactful solution. We believe in the potential of plant-based foods to drive the shift toward nutrition security and ecologically sound farming practices while providing economic opportunity that opens up new pathways for growth for agricultural stakeholders, food manufacturers, and marketplace partners alike.
"By combining the industry-building work of PBFA with the food system work of PBFI, we are creating a uniquely powerful engine to drive change farther and faster," says Rachel Dreskin, CEO of PBFA and PBFI.
While the path forward may not always be a simple one, it represents a future where shared values and business partnerships bring us closer to a world where the system we rely on to feed a growing global population is not only sustainable but resilient and generative.
A Vision for Change Grounded in Collaboration
For PBFA and PBFI, taking a systems-based approach means working across sectors, disciplines, and in partnership and collaboration with a diverse group of food system participants. We recognize that a food system transformation will require different interventions and a holistic approach that recognizes the complexity of challenges both stemming from and facing the food system.
Our new strategic plan serves as an invitation to potential partners and collaborators who are aligned in a desire to grow the plant-based industry from the ground up. At its core, we acknowledge that transformation involves more than just reaching a critical tipping point toward plant-based foods and diets. It's about embracing a rich diversity of flavors and cultural traditions and centering the power of our shared connection to food. And it’s about celebrating the abundance of experiences and delicious flavors available in plant-based. Honoring the importance of farming tradition and engaging partners dedicated to health equity and environmental justice go hand in hand with advocating to expand access to plant-based options in retail and foodservice venues. Plant-based foods hold a unique and special place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Connecting throughlines across industry and community will be essential to realizing our vision.
Influencing Action for Impact
The pillars of our plan mirror the focal areas of PBFA and PBFI’s work to date, with an increased emphasis on community building, partnership, and strategic collaboration.
These are the pillars of our 2025-2027 strategic plan to achieve this:
- Membership: By uniting a diverse coalition of manufacturers, processors, co-packers, distributors, as well as other businesses essential to our food system that are dedicated to the success of plant-based foods, we will elevate, champion, and strengthen our industry. Our goal is to strengthen the plant-based industry through pro-competitive dialogue and collective action that creates efficiencies, fosters innovation, and unlocks unique opportunities.
- Marketplace: By partnering with retailers, foodservice operators, distributors, brokers, and manufacturers, we will leverage plant-based foods as an essential engine to achieve sustainability goals, grow sales and market share, by expanding consumer options to meet demand.
- Policy: Ensuring a fair marketplace for the plant-based food industry is core to our work. We represent the unified voice of our members and partners who are aligned in advancing policy and legislation that ensures the support and success of our industry.
- Research and Education: By providing timely and best-in-class evidence-based insights, we aim to inform and accelerate actions in both the public and private sectors, supporting the growth of the industry and plant-based foods as key solutions in addressing global challenges.
- Consumer and Community Engagement: Building on the strength of our emotional and cultural connection to food is central to our strategy, and we will engage and inspire communities and consumers to increase adoption and exploration of plant-based foods and plant-rich diets.
- Agriculture: Strengthen and scale the plant-based food industry by driving crop diversification, building robust agricultural value chains and profitable markets for farmers, and accelerating the transition to sustainable farming systems.
We are committed to clear and decisive action and have already implemented our first initiative focused on expanding our membership’s plant-based industry representation. Earlier this month, PBFA’s membership team rolled out a revised dues structure for food manufacturers. This change, resulting in significant dues reductions for most members, reflects our commitment to fostering a more inclusive and robust plant-based foods community, taking into account the challenges and opportunities of the moment.
As the collective voice of the plant-based foods industry, we recognize that our strength lies in our unity. This restructuring will make PBFA membership more accessible while enhancing our ability to champion your interests, advocate for policy changes, and advance our shared vision of a sustainable, plant-based future of food.
This initiative is the first of many outlined in our 2025-2027 Strategic Plan and serves to set the tone for our call to action. Influencing food system change requires active and engaged participation from a variety of stakeholders and we are committed to implementing impactful, strategic solutions that serve our collective whole.
“We do this work in the spirit of service; service to our members who invest in our ability to protect and foster a favorable business environment, and to the people and ecosystems who are impacted by and essential to our food system,” said Rachel Dreskin. “We also do this work in partnership. We strive to understand where our expertise begins and ends, and to connect with aligned organizations to facilitate broadscale change toward regenerative, plant-based agriculture.”
We invite you to join us on this journey. Together, we can create a world where our values align with business goals, building a plant-based food system that respects the health and dignity of all people and the planet we share. Let’s move forward, united in our purpose, toward a sustainable and plant-powered future.