A few weeks ago I had the privilege and pleasure of being a part of the Adirondack Food System Network’s (AFSN) annual Food Summit.
This years theme was “Recipe for Resilient Food Systems: Connecting Actors to Action”.
Right from the opening panel discussion, I was deeply moved by this collective of people across the Adirondacks and upstate New York. This group was coming together from a place of caring deeply about the wellbeing of our community. Throughout my career, I have always seen this in people’s hearts. Despite a business and profit oriented world with systems that continue to fail and actively harm many of us, there are so many people alive out here with hearts that care enough to dedicate their lives to making the world more livable for each other. And this was no exception. The panel was made up of four women, working across the food system, wearing multiple hats and playing pivotal roles in their communities. They sat on stage and answered question after question about their understanding of what ingredients are needed to make our food system more resilient. And even as infrastructure needs, policy change, financial support and other factors were discussed, the answers that kept coming through were so focused on heart, soul and relationship.
What I heard expressed was that the state of the world and the food system
are calling us in to the question:
Who do we want to be as people, as a community and as a foodshed?
If you’re interested in watching the panel discussion and hearing it straight from these amazing food systems leaders in the Adirondacks, click the video below.
Soulful, Heart-led Cultural Change
Something in us is calling us to repair what’s broken, calling us to be ethical, and connected with the earth and each other. The panel discussed the need to be relational, collaborative, creative, resilient and heart driven. It was clear through their expertise that the right thing to do is to let go of systems that are extractive and to continue to incorporate the needs of the community. They emphasized that the value of life is in our community and our ability to give of ourselves to each other. The way forward is boots on the ground action that comes from the heart. What I thought would be a session about policy and infrastructure really centered on the responsibility and opportunity we have to create a world together inspired by our souls, led by our hearts and oriented toward supporting all of us.
The systems in place in our culture are so embedded, so massive and out of our control, that often they leave us with an experience of being at the impact of the way they are structured and the outcomes they create. In many ways this is how culture is; there are ideas, beliefs, structures, ways of organizing, people in charge of decision making, processes for these decisions, etc. And we are born into that set of realities. And yet, somehow this has given us the illusion that we are not also people who can create a reality, a culture and systems of our own.
When the systems in place get bigger than and disconnected from the people they are built to serve, we have to take our lives back into our own hands. So often we forget that we could build communities capable of doing it all if we were networked. We can feed ourselves and decide how we want to do that. We can create an adaptable and flexible system. We can share infrastructure, support each other when we need help, rethink how things are done, experiment. We can show up for the day to day work of learning and adapting to what shows up.
What needs to be considered and taken seriously is the true cost to our communities when we stay engaged in these other bigger systems. And how capable we are of transforming our world together.
Collective Organizing
While I came to the Food Justice Summit as an attendee in 2024, this year I was invited to facilitate a workshop on community organizing for food systems change. After 10 years working in the non-profit space on community resource building, then getting a Master’s in Sustainable Food Systems and leading projects and programs as a food systems leader, I decided it was time to start a consulting business. I wanted to work with communities to be intentional and strategic about coming together to get organized, to design systems that work for the whole ecosystem and to build the capacity to do so. So I founded Gaedrian Consulting.
Gaedrian is an old english word meaning to gather, to bring together, to unite.
Nothing inspires me more than bringing people together to share in our experiences, to share in our vision for a community that serves all of us, and to share in our co-creation of the world we live in.
The workshop I led was entitled “Collective Organizing: Assessing Readiness and Opportunities in Your Community. ” And it was awesome! Not only did folks learn different tools for engaging and assessing their regional food system, they also got a chance to workshop with their fellow community members. Attendees gathered with people from their county or region and did stakeholder mapping, discussed what resources and data already existed and explored next steps for their community. It was moving and affirming to see people strategizing around how to make their communities more connected and their systems more intentional. It felt great to know that they would walk away being more networked, more engaged and more ready to work together to impact their region collectively.
Regeneration and Reciprocity
While there, I attended a workshop by the Pachakuti Collective, an Indigenous Queer/Gender-Expansive centered collective stewarding healing relations between humans & beyond human kin. Their workshop was about dismantling European settler agriculture and food systems. They discussed and demonstrated how colonial agriculture has created ecological catastrophe and genocide. It was so powerful to see so clearly that the beliefs and ways inherent in this current system are objectification, centered on self and made to separate connections, focused on commodifying resources, land and people, centralization of power and controlling who has access to what and so much more. All of this gets discussed in food systems circles as what we want to change. We talk about organizing, we talk about access, we talk about sustainability. But as long as we continue to operate within the systems that created this cultural reality, we will continue to feel like we are compromising. We also relate to it as though we are trying to create something new or intangible that has never been done before. I feel the uncertainty of how do we make this world like this? How do we work within the system to make change?
But it was clear in hearing about traditional food ways that there already were and are systems of relating to each other, the land, the food that grows there with a set of values that create something more connected, more soul centered, more focused on a life of thriving relationship with all. Some of the values they highlighted present in traditional food ways are reciprocity, kinship with all life, and harmony and balance for sustaining life for generations.
One resource the Pachakuti Collective recommended was a book entitled “Restoring the Kinship Worldview by Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) and Darcia Narvaez. See the link below to purchase:
Ever since, I have been thinking of and dreaming about regeneration. How do we regrow what once was? How do we repair our relationships with each other, with the land, and with our non-human kin? How do we create systems that come from an ethos of oneness with each other and all of life? I know many of us care deeply and have dedicated our lives to transforming this sick and broken world. I believe every one of us is longing for a world of connection, a world of relationship, a world of giving and receiving, a world in harmony with the regeneration and reciprocity that Mother Earth so beautifully demonstrates. I believe that deep within each of us is a wisdom of how to live this way. I believe our souls and hearts need to live this way to be fully alive, but because of the oppressive and harmful nature of our current systems, we are surviving, suffering in and participating in the alternative.
The soul of regional, community-based food and cultural systems lives within each of us. When will we allow our hearts to lead how we live? When will we come together to create this world we so long for and need?
