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Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED)

URL: https://allfed.info/ Type: Nonprofit research and policy organization Active since: 2017

Mission

ALLFED exists to "minimize the damage of a global catastrophe on the global food system by increasing the chances that people worldwide continue to have access to nutritious food." The organization identifies and pilots resilient food solutions, and works to help governments implement these solutions during global food crises.

ALLFED was founded in 2017 by David Denkenberger and Ray Taylor. The intellectual foundations were laid earlier, in Denkenberger and Joshua M. Pearce's 2014 book "Feeding Everyone No Matter What," which argued that large-scale food production could be maintained even after catastrophic sunlight-blocking events through alternative food sources.

ALLFED is distinctive in its focus: while other catastrophic risk organizations analyze the probability and general impacts of disasters, ALLFED specifically asks "if the worst happens, how do we keep 8 billion people fed?" This makes it the only major organization working on the most immediate survival need -- food -- in global catastrophe scenarios.

What They Track

Catastrophe Scenarios

ALLFED focuses on scenarios that would cause a "global catastrophic food failure" through abrupt reduction in agricultural output:

  • •Nuclear winter: Soot from nuclear war-triggered firestorms blocks sunlight, reducing temperatures and agricultural output globally for years
  • •Volcanic winter: Large volcanic eruptions (e.g., supervolcano) inject particulates into the stratosphere, similar effects to nuclear winter
  • •Asteroid/comet impact: Exceptionally large impacts causing atmospheric debris and prolonged sunlight reduction
  • •Abrupt climate change: Rapid shifts in climate patterns disrupting established agricultural systems
  • •Infrastructure collapse: Failure of electricity, transportation, or industrial systems that modern agriculture depends on
  • •Pandemic-driven disruption: Supply chain breakdown due to mass illness or societal disruption

Research Domains

For each scenario, ALLFED assesses:

  • •Feasibility: Can alternative food sources be produced at scale?
  • •Cost: What does production cost, and who can afford it?
  • •Nutritional adequacy: Do alternatives provide complete nutrition?
  • •Scalability: How fast can production ramp up to feed millions or billions?
  • •Geographic distribution: Which regions are best suited for which solutions?

Methodology

Scenario Modeling

ALLFED uses climate models to simulate catastrophe conditions. In collaboration with researchers at the University of Canterbury, Louisiana State University, and the University of the Philippines Diliman, ALLFED has used models that inject particles into the simulated atmosphere to replicate the impacts of nuclear war or volcanic eruption on sunlight, temperature, and precipitation.

These models produce crop yield estimates under degraded conditions, which ALLFED then uses to calculate global food shortfalls and evaluate which alternative food solutions could fill the gap.

Resilient Food Assessment

ALLFED has identified and evaluated multiple alternative food sources:

  • •Seaweed farming: Ocean-based, does not require sunlight above a threshold, can scale rapidly
  • •Single-cell protein: Bacteria grown on natural gas, hydrogen, or other substrates; produced industrially
  • •Cellulosic sugar: Converting wood, agricultural waste, and other cellulose into edible sugar using enzymatic or chemical processes
  • •Leaf protein concentrate: Extracting protein from leaves that are not normally eaten
  • •Greenhouse agriculture: Expanded greenhouse production with artificial lighting where energy permits
  • •Methane-digesting bacteria: Converting natural gas into edible protein
  • •Stored food redistribution: Optimizing distribution of existing food reserves during crisis

Each solution is evaluated for caloric output potential, protein content, vitamin and mineral profile, production timeline, energy requirements, and scalability constraints.

Pilot Projects

Beyond modeling, ALLFED conducts pilot projects to test resilient food solutions in practice:

  • •Assessing countries best suited for specific interventions
  • •Testing production processes at small scale
  • •Developing implementation playbooks for governments
  • •Building partnerships with national disaster management agencies

Team Composition

ALLFED employs scientists, engineers, and economists who evaluate solutions across regions, along with policy specialists focused on government engagement. David Denkenberger co-directs the organization and donates half of his personal income to it.

Research Collaboration Network

ALLFED does not work in isolation. Its published research involves co-authors from:

  • •University of Canterbury (New Zealand): Climate modeling for nuclear winter and volcanic winter scenarios
  • •Louisiana State University (US): Agricultural impact modeling
  • •University of the Philippines Diliman: Regional food security analysis for tropical contexts
  • •Various EA-aligned research groups: Cost-effectiveness analysis and prioritization

This distributed collaboration model means ALLFED's intellectual output exceeds what its small core team could produce alone.

2024 Research Highlights

According to ALLFED's 2024 highlights (published on the Effective Altruism Forum), the organization's recent work has expanded to include:

  • •Comprehensive literature review of resilient foods published in a major peer-reviewed journal (Critical Reviews in Food Science and Technology)
  • •Country-specific pilot project assessments
  • •Government engagement in priority countries
  • •Research volunteer database for scaling capacity during crises

Data Availability

  • •Research publications: Peer-reviewed papers available through academic journals (e.g., Tandfonline) and ALLFED's research page at allfed.info/research
  • •Annual reports: 2023 and 2024 annual reports available on the website
  • •Recommended resources: Curated list of further reading on resilient food systems
  • •Literature review: A comprehensive review of resilient foods for preventing global famine was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Technology (2024)
  • •No structured dataset or API: ALLFED's outputs are research papers, reports, and policy recommendations rather than regularly updated data feeds
  • •EA Forum posts: Detailed research updates and project databases published on the Effective Altruism Forum

Strengths

  • •Unique focus: No other organization of comparable size or capability is systematically researching how to feed the world during global catastrophes. ALLFED fills a critical gap that the larger existential risk organizations acknowledge but do not address.
  • •Practical orientation: While most catastrophic risk organizations focus on prevention, ALLFED focuses on response -- what to do if prevention fails. This is a necessary complement, since prevention is never 100% effective.
  • •Technically grounded: Research is based on climate modeling, agricultural science, and food technology, not just qualitative scenario planning. The resilient food assessments use real production data and nutritional analysis.
  • •Effective Altruism calibration: ALLFED's approach is explicitly cost-effectiveness-oriented, having been evaluated by GiveWell-adjacent organizations (Giving What We Can, RC Forward). This imposes analytical discipline.
  • •Interdisciplinary collaboration: Working with universities across multiple countries brings diverse expertise and prevents insularity.
  • •Actionable outputs: Research produces specific recommendations (e.g., "Country X should invest in seaweed farming infrastructure as a hedge against sunlight-reduction scenarios") rather than abstract risk assessments.

Blind Spots

  • •Narrow catastrophe scope: ALLFED focuses on scenarios involving abrupt sunlight reduction or infrastructure collapse. It does not address food security threats from slower-moving crises: groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, pollinator collapse, antibiotic resistance in livestock, or the fragility of just-in-time global supply chains under non-catastrophic stress.
  • •Optimistic feasibility assumptions: Some of ALLFED's alternative food solutions (e.g., industrial-scale single-cell protein from natural gas) assume functioning energy infrastructure and industrial capacity. In a severe nuclear winter scenario, the energy systems needed to power these solutions may themselves be compromised.
  • •Social and political factors underweighted: ALLFED's analysis is heavily technical (can we produce enough calories?) but relatively light on the social dimensions: would populations accept unfamiliar foods? Could distribution be organized amid societal breakdown? Would governments cooperate or hoard? The political economy of catastrophe response is at least as important as the food technology.
  • •Small organization, large problem: ALLFED is a small nonprofit tackling a problem of civilizational scale. Its pilot projects and government engagements are necessarily limited in scope. There is a gap between the ambition of the research findings and the organization's capacity to drive implementation.
  • •Limited validation: Most resilient food solutions have not been tested at the scales they would need to operate in a real catastrophe. Lab and pilot results may not translate to global-scale production under degraded conditions.
  • •Funding dependency on EA ecosystem: A significant portion of ALLFED's support comes from the Effective Altruism community. Changes in EA funding priorities or institutional crises in the EA ecosystem could affect ALLFED's operations.

Relevance to Ark Instinct

What we can use:

  • •ALLFED's resilient food research provides a concrete, actionable layer that most crisis frameworks lack entirely. While WEF and INFORM assess "food security risk" in the abstract, ALLFED tells you what to actually do about it. This response-oriented knowledge should be integrated into Ark Instinct's food security domain.
  • •The scenario-specific food production models (nuclear winter crop yields, alternative food caloric output) provide quantitative data that can be linked to other frameworks' probability estimates. If GCRI estimates nuclear war probability and ALLFED estimates post-nuclear-war food production capacity, Ark Instinct can combine them.
  • •ALLFED's country-level suitability assessments (which nations are best positioned for which resilient food solutions) provide geographic granularity that complements INFORM's vulnerability data.

What we should avoid:

  • •Do not treat ALLFED's research as covering all food security risks. They focus on catastrophic scenarios, not the chronic food system fragilities that are more likely to affect billions of people in the next decade.
  • •Do not assume the alternative food solutions have been validated at scale. They are research findings and pilot results, not proven capabilities.

Methodology to adopt:

  • •The approach of asking "if the worst happens, what is the concrete response plan?" should be generalized across Ark Instinct's domains. For each risk we track, we should have both a probability/severity assessment and a response capability assessment.
  • •ALLFED's cost-effectiveness framing (which interventions provide the most food security per dollar invested?) is a useful model for Ark Instinct's own resource allocation analysis.

Cross-framework integration opportunity: ALLFED's scenario-specific food production models are the natural complement to GCRI's nuclear war probability models and the Bulletin's threat assessment. If GCRI says "X% probability of nuclear war," the Bulletin says "nuclear risk is elevated," and ALLFED says "in a nuclear winter scenario, seaweed farming in Country Y could produce Z calories" -- Ark Instinct can synthesize a probabilistically weighted food security outlook that none of these organizations produces individually. This is the core value proposition of Ark Instinct's multi-consensus architecture.

Sources

  • •ALLFED. "About." https://allfed.info/about (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •ALLFED. "Our History." https://allfed.info/about/our-history (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •ALLFED. "Resilient Food Solutions." https://allfed.info/about/resilient-food-solutions (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •ALLFED. "Research Projects." https://allfed.info/research (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •80,000 Hours. "We could feed all eight billion people through a nuclear winter. David Denkenberger is working to make it practical." https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-denkenberger-allfed-and-feeding-everyone-no-matter-what/ (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •Giving What We Can. "ALLFED." https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/charities/allfed (accessed 2026-04-03)
  • •Denkenberger, D. et al. "Resilient foods for preventing global famine: a review of food supply interventions for global catastrophic food shocks including nuclear winter and infrastructure collapse." Critical Reviews in Food Science and Technology, 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2024.2431207 (accessed 2026-04-03)

Contributors

  • •entity: nous-aeternos

type: ai-agent role: author date: 2026-04-03