Progress 01/15/24 to 01/14/25
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audience for NOURISH is aspiring and existing small business entrepreneurs in US food deserts, including prepared food business entrepreneurs and small farmers. With their small start-up costs ($5-$250K), diverse forms (e.g., food trucks, produce stands, urban farms), and ability to tailor products to local tastes, small business entrepreneurs are an overlooked resource for making a wider range of fresh foods accessible to consumers in food deserts. Most entrepreneurs in both urban and rural food deserts are themselves low-income. It is well documented that female and ethnic minority entrepreneurs experience unique barriers to accessing capital and other resources needed to launch successful small businesses--barriers that NOURISH seeks to overcome. The size of this target audience is large: there are over 34 million small business entrepreneurs currently operating in the US food sector. Another key audience for NOURISH is small business mentors providing low- or no-cost services that help entrepreneurs build small businesses, including those affiliated with the Small Business Administration, Community Development Corporations, and independent nonprofits. There are 2609 business mentoring offices affiliated with the Small Business Administration providing services to entrepreneurs in all USDA-designated food deserts, as well as 10,321 nonprofits offering small business mentoring services nationwide. Business mentors consult with entrepreneurs about their business plans and help them gain access to loans and other forms of capital. The NOURISH platform enhances these mentors' capacity to serve their clients by providing more refined geographic information on local market demand for fresh food, information needed to overcome regulatory hurdles, and automated assistance with business plans and new product ideation tools. Additional audiences for NOURISH are stakeholders in food and nutrition security who span science, government, the nonprofit sector, private industry, technology, and communities impacted by poor access to fresh food: Science: NOURISH incorporates and elevates multidisciplinary convergence science by contributing a novel, use-inspired, integrative application of scientific knowledge and methods from agriculture, public health, sociology, economics, business administration, computer science, psychology, regional planning, geography, and community-engaged "citizen science." Technology: In the technology sector, NOURISH builds capacity for computer science applications of artificial intelligence and software engineering that democratize the benefits of these advancements for the whole of society. Government: Government stakeholders include local, state and federal business regulators and urban planners, the USDA, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Industry: Private sector and industry stakeholders in NOURISH include impact investors working on food security, philanthropists and community development financing institutions. Community: NOURISH speaks to, and partners with, nonprofits and locally responsive community-based organizations devoted to food security and economic development, especially those represented by small farmers and food equity innovators. A final audience is students, trainees and learners from a wide range of disciplines that address food and nutrition security, who learn from the NOURISH team about how integrative science and technological tools that can be leveraged to promote fresh food access for all. The NOURISH training program focuses on outreach to learners through high-school level curriculum delivered by 4-H clubs, undergraduate training curricula in convergence and citizen science, through master's and PhD level mentorship opportunities to work with the NOURISH team on research projects. Changes/Problems:The Fresh Food Marketplace module of the NOURISH platform will connect small farms, aggregators, processors, distributors, and prepared food businesses. During Year 1, we worked closely with the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Division, the USDA Southwest Regional Food Business Center, Valley Vision, and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers to address the challenge of locating a comprehensive listing of small farms, needed for completion of this platform module. This data acquisition challenge, in addition to delays in the MVP release of the Smart Foodsheds Partner Finder by the NSF's ICICLE-AI, have delayed development of this platform component. During Year 2, we will continue to pursue small farms data and will consider default strategies that utilize higher-level listings of food processors, aggregators and distributors to develop the needed tool. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? NOURISH provides unique training and professional development opportunities for staff and students. All Co-Investigators (Co-Is) are engaged in NOURISH-related mentoring and coursework. Key training programs include: 1) high-school curriculum development in partnership with 4-H, 2) partnership with the CORE Institute, an NSF convergence research training institute currently focused on addressing food security, 3) curriculum development for practice-based learning courses for undergraduates that also support NOURISH data collection, and 4) recruitment and training of PhD and postdoctoral fellows from three University of California campuses who serve as NOURISH Fellows. Training Activities: The NOURISH team has created curricula for high school and undergraduate and students that weaves together knowledge from food systems science, applied geospatial information systems (GIS), sociology, psychology, computer science, business administration, and regional planning. Working with national 4-H Clubs, Co-Is Tera Fazzino and Ilya Zaslavsky developed NOURISH-related training activities for high school students interested in GIS methods. Students, 4-H mentors and NOURISH team members participated a one-day, in-person program during the National ESRI Users meeting in July 2024. The program included a tour of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, student project presentations, and discussions of GIS research strategies. The NOURISH/4-H collaboration continued through development of NOURISH-inspired GIS project design that explores local food environments. The project will be piloted by 4-H clubs in North Carolina before scaling nationally to generate learning opportunities and local food systems data that can be integrated into the NOURISH platform. This project was submitted as a 4-H student abstract for the ESRI conference in July 2025. Co-I Keith Pezzoli created a NOURISH-inspired Urban Studies and Planning undergraduate curriculum on Food Systems, emphasizing convergence science research and community-engaged fieldwork and data collection, that is reaching 143 students over two quarters. PI Laura Schmidt and Co-I Tera Fazzino presented the NOURISH project in person to the first cohort of 72 of students, framing the fieldwork effort as a pilot of new field research instruments in our test region, San Diego and Imperial Counties. Dr. Pezzoli has also engaged 24 graduate students in a Planning Theories course that is generating NOURISH-relevant analyses of regulatory and planning data for the platform's Regulatory Navigator. Co-I Ilya Zaslavsky has engaged 38 undergraduate students in NOURISH through an Applied Spatial Data Science course. Four groups (~10 students each) developed final projects addressing NOURISH-related geospatial research questions including: the siting of farmers markets, prediction of food scarcity areas, McDonald's marketing strategy, and predicting types of farming in San Diego County. Two of these groups presented their projects to NOURISH and NSF staff as part of the USDA/NSF site visit in San Diego in June 2024. Co-PI Hans Taparia developed a NOURISH-themed business ideation project as part of the Senior Capstone course at the New York University's Stern Business School. Nine student teams developed start-up food business ideas that members and staff of S:US (Services for the Underserved), a New York-based nonprofit serving 37,000 people annually, could take forward. Students spent time understanding the needs and strengths of the community, prototyping food business ideas and developing small business models. PI Laura Schmidt delivered a master's training in Implementation Science Applications to 40 students using NOURISH as a case study. She also presented NOURISH to 20 postdoctoral fellows in Medicine as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Network. Professional Development: NOURISH engages faculty, staff and students across numerous institutions. As a multisite team, we hold periodic in-person San Diego-based convenings of the larger team, partners and subgroups. During Year 1, we held a 3-day in-person work retreat, a USDA/NSF site visit of over 50 people in June, and two meetings for the CORE Convergence Research Summit.We continue to evaluate and modify our internal structures, such as working subgroups and communication channels, to maximize professional development for our younger investigators and URM contributors. Mentoring: NOURISH faculty are currently three mentoring PhD students in their areas of expertise as NOURISH Fellows. Pre-doc Muna Bashir, a PhD student at the UCSF School of Medicine, conducted an in-person multi-lingual workshop with aspiring food entrepreneurs in the Somali community at Partnership for New Americans in San Diego. The most pressing issues for success were determined to be securing funding and cooking facilities outside their homes.Interviewees emphasized the value of building communities of small business owners in immigrant populations. Pre-doc Emily Steliotes, a PhD student at UC Davis, is working with Co-PI Matthew Lange to develop the first Food Business Ontology required by the NOURISH system as well as any other advancement of AI-enabled platforms in food and agriculture. This ontology currently draws terms from 79 existing vocabularies related to food and agricultural businesses. Pre-doc Vaaruni Desai, a PhD student in Computer Science at UC San Diego, is working with Co-PI Amarnath Gupta on the platform's AI innovations and large language model questions that support NOURISH platform development. Guest Lectures and Conference Presentations. So far, team members have presented on NOURISH at 52 courses, community and professional events. The current year's presentations are included in the Products portion of this report. NOURISH team members presented lectures, papers, and posters introducing the NOURISH solution for food security and development of financial, technological and data management strategies to diverse audiences including: 1) the Convergence Research (CORE) Summit: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Food Systems, 2) University of California at San Diego's 34th Annual Urban Expo, 3) Tufts Food and Nutrition Innovation Council, Database Research Seminar Series, 4) ICICLE-AI partner meeting, 5) New York University Funders and Community Based Organizations meeting, 6) the 5th California Climate Change Assessment for the California Endowment, 7) the Workshop on Generative AI and FAIR Principles in Science Communication, at IIT in Kharagpur India, 8) the AI for Social Good Tutorial for Jadavpur University's IEEE Computer Society, 9) the Cancer Biology Training Consortium Annual Meeting, 10) the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, 9) the San Diego County Land Use and Environmental Justice Meeting, and 11) the California CEAL Network supported by the National Institutes of Health. Audiences for these presentations ranged in size from 20-500 people each. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Community Engagement Strategy: Communities of interest include small business owners (including owners of prepared food businesses and small farms), small business mentors, community-based nonprofits and economic development agencies, government agencies, and food security organizations. Co-PI Paul Watson, a seasoned community organizer and food security pioneer, leads our Community Engagement Program. To assure that end products of our work are meaningful and useful to people in food-insecure communities, we work very closely with representatives from this community of interest to co-design the NOURISH platform. Our multidisciplinary team is enriched by a wide range of partner organizations spanning science, government, the nonprofit sector, private industry, technology, and community groups seeking to promote next-generation methods for ameliorating food and nutrition insecurity. We have expanded our partnerships during Year 1 to maximize representation across gender, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and career stages. Year 1 Partnership Expansion: During Year 1, NOURISH broadened its communication with organizations representing rural communities and small farmers in our test region through discussions with Comite Civico del Valle, Inc and the Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation. To ensure the NOURISH design is flexible enough to integrate a variety of situations, we have engaged with organizations outside of California including The Farmer's Truck and Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative. We continue to build upon our collaborations with community-based organizations situated in food deserts in our test region. Early in Year 1, we began working closely with the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA) to capture community knowledge from a recent immigrant community of Somali refugees. NOURISH researcher, Muna Bashir, engaged aspiring food entrepreneurs in discussions of barriers and facilitators to food business establishment as part of a PANA Small Food Business Workshop. Through regular meetings with small business mentors at Logan Heights Community Development Center (CDC), the technology team is integrating the business mentoring workflow into the design of the NOURISH platform. This organization is creating opportunities for design relevance to facilitate practical adoption of the platform by other CDCs and related organizations. MidCity CAN, a nonprofit serving Latino community members has offered a unique perspective to regulatory barriers to the management of small businesses. During an NSF/USDA in-person site visit held in June 2024, we held a large workshop with our urban farming partner, Global ARC, to pilot processes for the AI-enabled "business ideation" module of the NOURISH platform. We are using Global ARC's Ocean View Growing Grounds site to field test the entire small business development process from early ideation to business launch, using taped transcripts of all aspects of the process to train the NOURISH AI system. NOURISH sponsored travel to the CORE Convergence Research Summit for two representatives from the California Alliance for Family Farmers (CAFF), a new test partner that provides business mentoring to small farmers in the California's Central Valley. In a side meeting at the Summit, we discussed the unique needs of small farmers in California and how NOURISH can be useful in their support of farmers' business success. During Year 1, NOURISH deepened its partnership with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Division and other California-based agricultural stakeholders to better tailor the platform to small farmers. NOURISH was added to a UC-wide proposal for the California Governor's Jobs First Initiative/Responsible Food Systems initiative in California's Central Valley.We also developed partnerships with Valley Vision and the USDA Southwest Regional Food Business Center to enhance NOURISH platform features for small farms, and in unsuccessful efforts to locate data on small farms for the platform's Fresh Food Marketplace. Engagement Activities with End Users: Use-inspired research, through individual and small group interviews and end-user workshops, is foundational to the NOURISH platform. So far, we have conducted N=325 individual and small group interviews, in addition to 14 workshops, to capture the diversity of entrepreneurial needs. Workshops have included: Small Business Administration Mentors Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) and SCORE Mentors Other Business Mentors Small Business Owners in Food Deserts Product Co-Design Workshops: Global ARC (3) PANA (4) Logan Heights CDC (3 workshops and over 20 1:1 co-design meetings) Digital and Print Media Outreach: During Year 1, we worked with the branding and communications contractor, Spritz, to develop an updated branding strategy, social media and communications plan, and website to support ongoing outreach to communities of interest. Our brand strategy seeks to invite interest and participation from people in communities affected by food insecurity, as well as broader stakeholders in science, government, and the private investment communities. Throughout Year 1, the NOURISH team garnered national and local media attention, with highlights including: 1) a local PBS television news segment featuring San Diego's role as a test region for the NOURISH platform, 2) a lengthy podcast interview and print news piece with PI Laura Schmidt by CNN's Sanjay Gupta, 3-5) Washington Post and New York Times articles, and an episode of the More Perfect Union Podcast ,featuring Co-I Tera Fazzino's work on hyperpalatable foods, 7) an LA Times editorial by Hans Taparia on the value of user-owned and -run businesses, and 8) a soon-to-be released BBC documentary on ultraprocessed foods featuring PI Laura Schmidt. Professional Meeting Outreach: In June, NOURISH was the focus of a one-day, in-person on small business development held by the New York University's Stern Business School in June 2024. This meeting included a business school faculty and students, a hand-picked list of philanthropists and impact investors, and leaders of major nonprofits focused on food security and poverty alleviation. USDA and NSF Collaboration on Food Security: NOURISH benefits from sponsorship and program support from both the NSF and USDA, and we seek to leverage this unique position to promote food and nutrition research and progress on the nation's food security crisis. Throughout Year 1, we reported incremental progress to both USDA and NSF and remained in close contact with program officials in both agencies. Throughout Year 1, we continued to receive guidance from our NSF Convergence Accelerator Coach Marcia Chong Rosado and Program Director Michael Reksulak. Four or more team members attended weekly sessions of the Phase 2 "Innovation Curriculum" of the NSF Convergence Accelerator. Products of this effort include a financial model that allows us to budget for expansion, and four pitch decks for use in fundraising for the continued expansion of NOURISH. We have collaborated with other NSF Phase 2 teams in the Food and Nutrition Security Track of the NSF Convergence Accelerator to synergize efforts throughout the year. In October 2024, we supported an in-person "track integration" meeting in San Diego with NSF staff to plan for a Food and Nutrition Security Data Hub to promote geospatial data sharing on food systems. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With most Year 1 objectives achieved, the team is well positioned to complete our proposed Year 2 activities. Year 2 activities will build towards the release of a minimum viable product (MVP) of the NOURISH platform during the final quarter of 2025, for use by selected beta testers situated in major urban and rural food deserts in California. We selected California as the first state for scaling up because it has more food-insecure households than any other US state. In addition to the technical and deployment goals described below, a goal for Year 2 efforts is raising adequate capital from government grants and philanthropy (currently estimated at $10M) to support future "Phase 3" deployment and scaling up of the NOURISH platform to reach end users nationwide. We are well positioned for this fundraising effort, having developed a financial model and four funder pitch decks during the Year 1 NSF Innovation Curriculum. So far, we have secured pitch sessions with three major philanthropic foundations and one impact investor focused on food security for the first quarter of 2025. Throughout Year 2, we will work with our USDA program official, and NSF coach and program officer, to support outreach to governmental funders. Year 2 Steps to Achieve Technical Progress. Year 2 efforts will focus on completing technical progress on the platform sufficient for an MVP release of NOURISH in the final quarter of 2025, followed by initiation of beta testing at selected sites in California. This requires completion of the following steps: Continuing to work hand-in-glove with our co-design and testing partners in San Diego and Imperial Counties, we will continue platform development and alpha testing for the NOURISH platform. We will continue development of the KNOW-FOODS knowledge graph, the backbone information system for NOURISH, with retrieval systems housed on the NSF-funded National Data Platform at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Business regulatory data capture from local governments in California food deserts outside our current test region. Further development and end-user testing of the mapping and chat-based interfaces for NOURISH, with adaptations for Spanish-speaking users. We will work towards the completion of the user intent analysis, the user dossier, using the KNOW-FOOD knowledge graph. In the process, we will perform user testing on privacy concerns. Work towards the completion of our deployment strategy for the seamless integration of NOURISH into existing Salesforce and related content management systems currently used by business mentors. Completion and alpha testing of the business ideation and Opportunity Map algorithms and end-user preference options that optimize recommendations on business types, locations, and products, while integrating information on regulatory constraints for the user's geospatial area. Integration of a healthy food recommendation algorithm into a NOURISH recommendation system to nudge users toward growing, preparing and marketing healthy products based on current nutrition science. Building out our listing of public grants, private loans and other small business capital sources, and further work on the financial recommendation algorithm that optimizes recommendations for loan and grant packages based on user preferences. Integration of a local business mentor referral system in the NOURISH Business Resource Center based on listings of mentors affiliated with the Small Business Administration and local nonprofits. Year 2 Steps for Platform Deployment and Training. All training, professional development and outreach efforts will continue. Deployment of the NOURISH MVP in California communities outside our test region will occur towards the latter part of 2025. Leading up to this, we will prepare beta testing sites for MVP deployment. Steps include: Develop and deploy workable beta testing procedures, guidelines and survey instruments. Work with existing partners in the Small Business Administration, the Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, and community-based nonprofits to begin deployment of a beta version of the MVP in food deserts in California in the final quarter of 2025. Deploy our social media, website and community engagement strategies to recruit new beta testing partners that serve food deserts in California, including community development corporations, freestanding community-based organizations, and community development financing institutions. Work with government funders and philanthropic organizations to develop national scaling plans for "Phase 3" and to secure the resources necessary to continue to develop and scale the platform in food deserts nationwide. Continue as in Year 1 with all NOURISH training assets, including 4-H Club and undergraduate curricula, and our graduate and postdoctoral training programs. Continue outreach and dissemination to communities of interest as in Year 1, through professional and community presentations, scientific publications, earned media and digital outreach using the NOURISH website and social media. Content marketing and a blog will begin in the third quarter of 2025.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Impact: This project increases food and nutrition security by expanding the capacity of small businesses in food deserts to produce more fresh food. The NOURISH artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled platform allows small business owners to tailor products to local preferences for taste, convenience and affordability. NOURISH leverages these communities' underutilized entrepreneurial talent, their rich and diverse food heritages, unmet demand for healthy food, and the relatively low costs of starting new small businesses and expanding established ones. Broader impacts of this effort include advancement of the nation's health and societal well-being by empowering small business owners and promoting societal and economic prosperity through communal wealth generation in currently disadvantaged communities. We promote STEM education through robust plans for the integration and engagement of students from high school to graduate school in convergence science through problem-based learning. Year 1 technical accomplishments include: 1) creation of the NOURISH platform's AI-enabled technical infrastructure, the KNOW-FOODS knowledge graph involving 150 data sets and 5132 variables, 2) software engineering for the platform's conversation management system, user dossier and intent analyzer, all specific to food and agriculture, 3) development of a culturally appropriate chat- and map-based user interface integrating 12 different geospatially granular data streams, and 4) the creation of the first Food Business Ontology that integrates 79 existing vocabularies. Our test region includes San Diego County (an urban and suburban area, where 25% of census tracts have food deserts) and rural Imperial County (where 72% of census tracts have food deserts). Throughout Year 1, we have worked closely with alpha testers from 6 community-based organizations in this test region (e.g., the Logan Heights Community Development Corporation [CDC], San Diego/Imperial County Small Business Development Corporation [SBDC]). We work hand-in-glove with staff and clients at these test sites to co-design the use-inspired NOURISH platform. Alpha testers represent three use cases: small business mentors, prepared food business owners, and small farmers in USDA-designated food deserts. Year 1 Technical Progress. We have made progress on all components of the NOURISH platform, including: Business Financing Center:We have developed a dynamic database of public and private funding sources available to small business entrepreneurs in our test region. The system updates new and expired programs, changing interest rates and shifting eligibility criteria. In parallel, we are capturing the domain knowledge of business mentors at Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) to create a practical, unbiased, generative AI- and rules-based matching algorithm that pairs the user's financing preferences with the eligibility criteria and loan offerings to produce a short list of likely funders. Business Opportunities Map:We have made significant progress in collecting geospatial information for the Opportunities Map, which includes over 2500 variables capturing demographics, consumer demand, market potential and retail demand data for 2172 block groups in our test region, resulting in over 5 million data records. In addition, we have combined geospatial data from local governments (counties and municipalities) and Google to identify all local businesses cross-referenced with neighborhoods and block groups. We are currently developing a user-facing regional assessment method for food-related businesses using these data together with a large language model. Business Resource Center:We have identified 340 business categories related to food and agriculture in our test region. To help users develop new, more marketable, food business models and product lines (called "business ideation"), we have developed an AI-based technique that generates over 20 broad types of user intentions for each business category. Our business ideation engine employs these intention categories to produce both an assessment of business ideas proposed by the user, and additional relevant information that will help the user make more informed choices that help optimize business success. We are combining business assessments with the Opportunity Map's geospatial data to create an interactive conversation with the end user. We are currently creating a prototype of the user interface that allows users to interact with the business ideation tool via a map-enriched conversation. Fresh Food Marketplace: The Fresh Food Marketplace platform module connects small farms, aggregators, processors, distributors, and prepared food businesses to create more resilient local supply chains. During Year 1 we documented the challenges with locating local and national data on small farms to population this platform module. Given the challenges of data acquisition, as well as delays in development of the Smart Foodshedtool being developed by ICICLE-AI, we determined that this component should be prioritized during Year 2. See additional comments below. Regulatory Navigator:We have ingested every food-related business regulation that applies to our test region, including local and state regulations, together with Title 7, Subtitle B of the Federal Code of Regulations covering regulations of the Department of Agriculture. This comprehensive database totals over 1.57 million regulations. We are currently adding farm-related regulations (e.g., from Water Boards). These regulations are analyzed using Natural Language Processing and custom indexed for different purposes, including place-based information, entity-based information, and definitional information. We are organizing this information into a knowledge graph and creating a natural language-based query mechanism. Additional Accomplishments: Working with attorneys at all six of the home institutions of the scientists contributing to NOURISH, we successfully negotiated an inter-institutional Intellectual Property Agreement that forms the basis for protecting intellectual property generated by NOURISH, to support filing patents on our science and technology innovations. Working with the branding and media firm, Spritz, we built and launched the NOURISH communications campaign and website (nourish.ucsf.edu) offering resources, outreach and partner-development services. The website architecture provides a portal to the NOURISH platform, allowing users to store and build a user dossier, and to collaborate with a business mentor. During Year 1, we developed metrics for monitoring impact on the NOURISH dashboard. Impact metrics focus on serving more, and more diverse, small business entrepreneurs, and helping them to succeed in their local markets.Small businesses are known to have high failure rates, so we track business survival times. Finance-related metrics include growth in platform subscribers and funds raised for scaling up the platform to reach more food-insecure communities. Key process indicators focus on increasing the efficiency of business mentors: increasing their ability to see more clients, in less time, and with faster times to the launch of new businesses. We also track customer satisfaction, and the platform's reach into new regions of the country. As needed, we have expanded our partners to increase representation of key stakeholders in our test region. A detailed report of this work, and our broader partnership development effort, is included below, in the section on disseminating NOURISH to communities of interest. Major efforts have been underway to launch the NOURISH training program and build course curricula that support our partnership with the 4-H Club, public universities and agricultural extension. These achievements are discussed below in our report on training and professional development efforts.
Publications
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