Building MBOLD: A Collaborative Vision for Food System Innovation
Open Rivers facilitated the early development and design MBOLD—a coalition uniting leaders from some of the world’s foremost food and agriculture companies, research institutions, and nonprofits to address critical challenges in the global food system. We worked closely with executives from major ag and food companies in Minnesota to build a collaborative platform that harnesses the state’s deep agricultural expertise and institutional strengths, including those of the University of Minnesota, to raise awareness and drive collective action.
Empowering wildlife health professionals with leadership development, data-driven decision tools, and a model for organizational resilience grounded in mental well-being.
Open Rivers successfully partnered with wildlife health professionals at The Orangutan Veterinary Advisory Group (OVAG) to integrate mental health and leadership development into their core strategy, designing and delivering workshops and webinars that surfaced systemic challenges and built organizational capacity. We repositioned soft skills as critical infrastructure for resilience and influence, especially in high-burnout, mission-driven environments.
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Our second phase of the project focused on elevating data quality through the strategic design and rollout of a daily survey tool, equipping OVAG with consistent, high-integrity insights.
Laying the data backbone for a transparent and resilient global food system.
In collaboration with the World Bank, Open Rivers advanced the vision for a Global Food System Observatory by synthesizing agri-food data and identifying key opportunities for global-scale database architecture. Partnering with the data-driven agriculture team, we laid the foundation for a more integrated, transparent, and responsive global food data ecosystem.
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Quantifying soil health to de-risk the future of farming.
We supported the development of a predictive model quantifying the risk-mitigating benefits of soil health practices, strengthening its credibility across scientific, technical, and policy audiences. As part of a cross-sector working group, we partnered with Land Core to work with stakeholders and identify ways to drive adoption of soil-focused resilience strategies.
Unified data. Smarter ag.
Open Rivers worked with FFAR to develop a strategy to identify and connect over 500 disparate sources of agricultural data to support the AgMission initiative. We led the data landscape scan assessing the current availability and interoperability of agriculture data. We identified 460+ organizations with relevant data and undertook a significant scan through a series of surveys, research and interviews. The landscape scan helps all of us in the community who utilize data and models to support farmers and ranchers adopt practices that are environmentally and financially viable.
Open Rivers worked with FFAR to develop a strategy to identify and connect over 500 disparate sources of agricultural data to support the AgMission initiative. We led the data landscape scan assessing the current availability and interoperability of agriculture data. We identified 460+ organizations with relevant data and undertook a significant scan through a series of surveys, research and interviews. The landscape scan helps all of us in the community who utilize data and models to support farmers and ranchers adopt practices that are environmentally and financially viable.