Our inaugural Food Beyond the Plate event is designed to shift how we perceive our relationship with food, nature and each other. It calls for moving beyond viewing food merely as a commodity on our plates to understanding it as a vital connection between ecological health and human health whilst respecting social justice.

 

It is a paradigm shift. One where the intricate web of relationships in our food system are felt. One where we cultivate a deeper sense of interconnection. One where we take responsibility for our food choices and understand their ripple effects; but from a place of care not critique.

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The event - which courageously brings together scientists, chefs, policy makers, artists, farmers, processors and other food systems practitioners - is intended to encourage people to reconnect with their food. To see food as alive and as nourishment. Food ingredients are not just a list of inputs, each with a price tag which formulate into a product that goes onto feed a nation. Our food is a product of the context within which it is both produced and consumed and with this, food has the potential to be much more thoughtful and much more connecting.

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Here at the Living Food Campus, we believe that the future is generated day by day, word by word, conversation by conversation, and action by action. Small acts matter. The way we think matters. We make the world through how we interpret it, through the stories we tell ourselves and our belief systems. Partial, shiny and exclusive solutions are not the generative answer.

 

When we look to nature for the answer we see fractals; these never ending complex patterns that repeat themselves in an ongoing feedback loop. These are images of interconnected nonlinear living systems, of chaos. So nature teaches us to approach our systems work with this same fractal intelligence. An intelligence that appreciates the ever-changing dynamic relationships of the systems we are part of. Interventions that gently guide, inspire and enable us towards making better decisions about how we interact with food are important. This is how nature works; nature fixes itself bit by bit. Again, the small acts and our mindsets matter. 

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When we get involved with producing or processing food that we’re going to eat ourselves we are forced to pay attention. We become more present, more intimately connected to both the physical act of creating and also to the conducive conditions that are required for the magic to unfurl.

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It is easy to ignore the wider living system that surrounds us. If they don’t seem directly relevant to our day to day they don’t always register in our consciousness. But the thing is, soil matters, insects matter, microbes matter. Not as separate entities but as elements that interact with one and other, respond to one and other and shape one and other in service of life. In service of our collective future. And that's exactly what we as humans do too. What if we became better aware of this?

 

Historically we know that food has the potential to be our medicine. Yet evidence shows that the food we are consuming today often lacks vitality. There are many reasons for this. The way in which food is produced and the lifelessness of the soil within which food is grown. The genetic integrity of seeds. The distance food has traveled. The way food is processed and the additives that are put into food. Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. 

 

If we proactively regenerate soils and eat a biodiverse range of crops from those same soils we can improve the health of the planet and our own health in parallel. And all the while, ensure the social justice of those most closely entangled with the food system. That is what this event is all about - food as a way to sense the inherent interconnections that exist between human and land. As Michael Chrichton said, “Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world”.

 

We need a different way of thinking and being if we are to truly transform food systems and our relationship to them.

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