Cultivate Conversation
The how and why I decided to go globe-trotting to explore the world through the lens of food and agriculture
Have you eaten today? The average human spends just over 4 years and 6 months of their lifetime eating. Food is a fundamental way that humans connect with each other and the earth. I believe Wendell Berry’s statement declaring “Eating is an agricultural act”. Yet, with an increasingly centralized food and agriculture system, we have lost the fundamental understanding of what agriculture is and how our food gets from farm to plate. Without this understanding we cannot participate in creating a more regenerative agriculture system that is good for both people and the planet.
The roots of our food and agriculture system touch many social and environmental themes of our world today. Food impacts health. Food impacts our planet. Food impacts our economies. My journey to travel and document our food system is a passion project that aims to Cultivate Conversation about food and agriculture that shares real stories about people, projects and companies that are doing work to create a more regenerative food system.
A picture snapped from a plane on a recent flight back home to Missouri. For those of us that aren’t in the agriculture space, it is hard to know what shapes the landscape in the heartland of the U.S. and the realities farmers face everyday.
You could say that the seeds for this project were first planted my sophomore year at Villanova University. Or you could go even further back to the weekends on my great grandparent’s farm in Southern Missouri. Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis and spending the weekends on the farm, I have always been connected to the world of agriculture. But it was in college that I became eager to learn everything I could about our food system. I worked on a thesis project for two years of college that introduced me to many disparate opinions on what our food and agricultural system should look like. I wanted to understand how different stakeholders viewed sustainable agriculture and the points of common ground. I wanted to Cultivate Conversation.
Like many other topics today, the world of food and agriculture is extremely polarizing. It’s commonplace for people to believe in all small-scale organic agriculture, or to think that only large commodity style farms are the ones feeding the world. I believe that the solution lies somewhere in the middle. We are going to need many forms of agriculture to sustainably feed a growing population. We will need innovations that incorporate both man-made technologies, as well as biomimetic design solutions from nature to grow food. I aspire to bring together solutions and conversations ranging from the smallest community garden, to the largest industrial farm. I believe that it will take a myriad of solutions to sustainably feed the world.
A picture from a recent Sunday at the farmers market. The patchwork quilt of agriculture land above compared to the food that I am holding to hand out to neighbors are two very different scales of agriculture. Each playing a critical role in our food and agriculture system.
After spending three years at Farmers Business Network, a fast-growing agriculture technology company and then completing various independent consulting projects with a number of startup agriculture technology companies, I am excited to continue to learn and explore the world through the lens of food and agriculture. I am eager to see where the journey will take me and what work I will find along the way.
What Will I be Doing?
Globe-trotting to explore the world through the lens of food and agriculture. And more specifically:
Getting my hands dirty working on different types of farms to listen and learn from farmers that are running diverse operations.
Collaborating with food and agriculture organizations and companies working hard on developing solutions to create an agricultural system that nourishes the planet and feeds a growing population.
Breaking bread with new and old friends to learn how people around the world think differently about how their food is grown and how our agricultural system should work.
Documenting everything along my journey to help Cultivate Conversation about how our food and agriculture system works, and ultimately cultivate understanding and real solutions to sustainably feeding the world.
I am excited to meet people, get on farms, work on projects and learn more about how the world can create a more regenerative food and agriculture system. I have already spoken with a number of organizations and companies that are doing great work and I look forward to connecting with many more along my journey. My first stop will be New Zealand. I will be there from October of 2019 through at least January of 2020. Beyond that I am considering either Southeast Asia or Latin America as my next stop. I expect this solo journey to push my limits, stretch my mind, and act as a conduit to learn about myself and the world. I hope you can join me through my blog.
How to Get Involved?
Subscribe to Cultivate Conversation Stories: I will be sharing regular updates through this blog. I encourage you to subscribe, and share ideas or topics you would like to hear about.
Share with friends: Share this project with friends you think would be interested in learning more. Because if the simple act of eating is an agricultural act, then we are all dependent on finding a way to feed the world in a manner that nourishes people and the planet.
Contribute to the journey: This is a self-funded journey but if you like what you are reading and want to contribute to help me reach more farms, connect with more companies and tell more stories, donate to the cause! Big or small every little bit helps!
I invite you to help me Cultivate Conversation.