What is your heart longing for in relation to food systems transformation?

This is a time that is calling us to imagine beyond what is—to redesign food systems with our hearts, creativity, courage, and a shared higher vision.  

We are launching a process of gathering offerings and everyone is invited to take part. 

This process invites you to explore how we can invite and activate our hearts and creativity into transforming food systems. Food systems are shaped not only by policies and technologies, but also by relationships, culture, values, emotions, and the way we relate to ourselves, each other, and the Earth. 

We invite you to share from your heart how food systems can become sources of regeneration, justice, and wellbeing—for people, communities, and the planet. Bring your whole self into this space: your longing, gratitude, heartbreak, aspiration, and personal commitment. 

You are warmly invited to express your offerings in artistic form—through writing, drawing, poetry, music, traditional songs, video, or any creative expression that feels true to you. 

Together, through many voices, stories, and forms of expression, we are co-creating the energy field of this movement for conscious food systems transformation. 

All these offerings will inform the Global Conscious Food Systems Summit and will be integrated into an artistic installation in Bhutan during our global gathering (31 August–4 September) symbolizing the activation of the heart of food systems.  

Reflection Questions 

We invite you to reflect individually or collectively on the following questions from your own concrete experience of your food system: 

• What am I grateful for in food systems? 

• What breaks my heart in food systems? 

• What transformation does my heart long to see and contribute to food systems? 

• What values or qualities do I want to cultivate to support this transformation? 

• What is my personal/collective commitment to food systems?

Noemi, Italy

To transform our food systems, one must first confront our disconnection. An anonymous Himalayan farmer recently quoted a truth that resonates with anyone who eats -

"We know our neighbors. We know our doctors. In times of trouble, we even know our policeman/lawyers. But the one human being who literally feeds us from our first breath to our last - we do not even know their name."

A conscious food system is one where the farmer is no longer an invisible input, but a recognized friend in our daily survival - a relationship built on active compassion (Karuna) and a shared joy in their success (Mudita)!

https://gramdisha.org/

#NoFarmersNoFood #KnowFarmersKnowFood

#Agroecology

#Tendrel

Through Duduum (the heartbeat that gives its name to the social micro-enterprise I founded in Switzerland, www.duduum.ch), I’m bringing a new ritual based on pure cacao to the world as a symbol of the new era, which calls for bringing back to the heart what our heart already knows. My contribution to Cofsa lies in promoting awareness of our interdependence through dedicated practices and workshops on the themes of food and money. Thank you for your work.

• What breaks your heart in food systems?

• What are you grateful for?

• What does your heart long to see in food systems?                                     
  We started with a collective guided meditation, we journaled, and we harvested our reflections together! This little words cloud is what our community deeply longs to see in food systems. Don't we all want more love, justice, connection, healing, equity and much more? The way is long, but starting it together alreaydy paves a path for transformation. 

My heart longs for a food system where farmers thrive, nature regenerates, and communities have access to safe, nutritious food.

Through my journey with the Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA), I have learned that transforming food systems is not only about increasing productivity—it is about restoring our relationship with the land, respecting those who produce our food, and creating sustainable livelihoods for future generations.

Working closely with cotton farmers in Bangladesh has strengthened my belief that regenerative agriculture, climate-smart practices, biodiversity, and human-centered leadership are essential to building resilient food systems.

I am sharing my LinkedIn article as a reflection of this learning journey and my commitment to advancing conscious and regenerative food systems.

"Real transformation begins when we lead with both knowledge and heart."

#CoFSA #FoodForTheHeart #ConsciousFoodSystems #RegenerativeAgriculture #ClimateSmartAgriculture #SustainableAgriculture #Leadership #Bangladesh #CottonConnect

Living together in the markets

Understanding the consumer's personality allows us to value farmers

So, I wish for a food system that is built on respect for human rights rather than exploitation. I want to see a world where farmers are well recognised and compensated for nourishing society, and the end products of their labour are accessible not only to the rich but to everyone, irrespective of their social or economic standing.

• What are you grateful for in food systems?

Being part of this great team learning together, sharing and looking forwards into how we can build on good practices while we improve on mistakes.

• What breaks your heart in food systems?

Climate change – after severe deforestation, cutting down the indigenous trees and replacing with exotic trees varieties, soil erosion followed by deep gulleys loss of biodiversity – birds, bees and other creeping insects. Poor farm production – loss of high value indigenous crops varieties like sorghum, dolichos lab lab, millet, cowpea, overtaken by introduced seeds like the maize which does not do well with little rainfall.

Changed rainfall patterns we have two rainfall seasons in Kenya but March April May – MAM long rainfall and October, November December short rainfall. According to our indigenous knowledge and records, it used to be on time and enough rainfall, but the patterns have changed currently, less and erratic.

·       What transformation does your heart long to see and commit to food systems?

Mindset change in the farming techniques and growing right seeds variety, soil and water conservation to heal the environment. Planting right trees seedlings and adoption of the farmer managed natural regeneration of the trees.

Food is fundamental to life, health, well-being, and productivity. A sustainable food system encompasses how food is produced, processed, stored, transported, marketed, prepared, consumed, and shared, while ensuring food safety, nutrition, affordability, environmental sustainability, and equitable access.

Food is more than what we eat, beyond meeting nutritional needs and productive lives, it contributes to family bonding, it connects people, it promotes peace, love, solidarity, cultural identity, preserves social values, and social cohesion. Communities with sustainable access to safe and nutritious food are better positioned to maintain their traditions, nurture healthy lives, strengthen social cohesion, build peaceful and resilient societies.

Performed here by the Shumei Taiko Ensemble, Taiko is more than an art form but a spiritual practice that helps us find harmony with nature and with one another through the beauty and power of the drums. Many members of the Shumei Taiko Ensemble are also Natural Agriculture farmers, who recognize our interconnectedness with nature and have an overriding respect for nature in their farming practice.

For performers and listeners alike, Taiko cultivates a feeling of gratitude and uplifts the human spirit as they listen, observe, and nurture a heartfelt connection to the land.

Working with our partners in India, The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farmers (APCNF), we have completed a successful pilot project using Brix values (thickness of juice) and taste, to identify signals of ecosystem heath.

Using this method we are starting to measure a difference in high- and low-quality crops, which tend to relate (not always) to naturally farmed and chemically farmed produce, respectively.

This community based research project called, Taste the Life: How Food Quality Shapes Health and Nature, will soon begin its next phase to scale up and hopefully validate the relationship between taste, nutrition, soil health and human health.

If validated, it will allow the development of a Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS) where farmers collect data and eaters validate it using taste, to promote ecosystem health.

Building trust through relationship is such a refreshing new approach for developing an eco-centric based science. It is inclusive, that anyone can engage with, regardless of age, gender or academic ability.

Grffn and APCNF will be running some comparative taste testing sessions at the Bhutan Summit, so do please come and say hello and see if you can taste the difference between food that supports life and food that does not.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cn1zG8pjdGjHbPo7mxS7rwAKZTZfUxQR/view?usp=drivesdk

Just this past weekend, in Pupuan, Bali, Indonesia, I visited the most miraculous compost system I have ever seen: raw materials to rich forest humus in three months. This compost produced the most delicious coffee I have ever tasted. My friends Andrew and Nava, its creators, have a keen eye for observation and a reverent connection with nature. They treat their goats, their compost piles, their trees, their networks of farmers, their customers, and themselves with the utmost love and care.

Participation of the heart matters. Love for the land, the food, the people who produce it and consume it: it all matters.

I urge those with political and economic influence to shift subsidies, policies, and purchasing to favor the peasant farmers and the small-scale artisans: the people who choose health, life, and community every day against all odds. We are all under enormous pressure from economic systems that reward distant shareholders, business as usual decisions, and ignorance of the destruction that they create. We live in the shadows of large companies and corrupt politicians who are not afraid to play dirty. We must all find the courage to rise above these systems, build new soil, and follow the path of the heart.

Every regenerative farm is an act of resistance and an act of renewal.

To all of the conscious food producers of the world and those who support them: I see you and I appreciate you. Thank you for taking a stand for yourselves, for your communities, and for the earth. Thank you for creating clean water, rich soil, healthy food, and vibrant ecosystems for all of us and our future generations. Thank you for inspiring me to be courageous. Thank you for choosing love.

All my best wishes for this inaugural Global Conscious Food Systems Summit and for all of those to follow.

Carly Gayle, MA candidate in Global Sustainability Policy and Management at Brandeis University

Most days, food is just part of everyday life. We eat without really stopping to think about everything that had to happen for that food to reach us. But when I thought about the land, the people before us and the generations that will come after us, I realised there is actually so much to be grateful for.

I am grateful for the land that continues to provide for us, and for the people who grow and prepare our food. I am also grateful for the knowledge that has been passed down through generations. So much of what we eat today carries a little bit of that history with it.

What worries me is how easily we can lose this connection. Traditional foods and knowledge can slowly disappear, farmers and producers can go unnoticed, and sometimes we take more from nature than we give back. We become so used to having food in front of us that we forget the soil, water, work and time behind it. When the meditation asked us to think about the next seven generations, that stayed with me…..

I would want them to inherit more than just memories of the things we have today. I want them to still have healthy land, clean water and food traditions they can experience for themselves. I hope they can grow and innovate too, but without having to lose their connection to where they came from.

For me, change starts with simple values, gratitude, care, respect and responsibility. And my own commitment can also start small waste less, appreciate local and traditional foods more, learn the stories behind them, listen to the people who carry this knowledge, and share what I learn with others.

We may not be able to change an entire food system alone. But we are all part of it, and the choices we make today become part of what someone else inherits tomorrow. So, I hope we leave them something worth inheriting.

- Pema Lhaden Topgay (Bhutan)

Systems where food becomes a transpersonal medium of reconnection to the living land, and where humans recognize themselves as participants in creation rather than drivers of extraction.

Systems that nurture the metabolism of the Earth and, in return, nurture the health of all her beings.

Where seeds are recognized as living lineages, carrying cultural memory and shaping our identities in relationship with the land and seasons.

Where animals are seen as subjects and partners in the web of life, rather than objects within an exploitative system of production.

And systems in which our language, and the ways of thinking it carries, shifts from possession and gain toward relationship, reciprocity, and an awareness of the dynamic web of life behind every bite we take.

"What would a Ugandan Conscious Food System look like one that puts the spirituality of a grandmother saving seeds, the culture of sharing food at a clan gathering, and the happiness of a child eating organic matoke, at the centre of policy, not at the margins? "Can we transform food systems without transforming how we value the people who grow the food? I would love to hear from fellow Ugandans: What value from our culture should the world learn from? #CoFSA2026 #Bhutan2026 #Uganda #FoodSystems #ConsciousFoodSystems #UNDP #SmallholderFarmers

I repeat to myself what James Baldwin once said about love—“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” I must speak these truths. I must yell it from depth of my soul, past the conditioning and the proprieties, and I must make space for the truth. I must let go of the mask that is part of the past world that I know and I must step into the unknown universe, the one that scares me because it breaks the boundaries of what I have lived in my entire life. I am 3 decades old, and if I don’t change, I will not see another 50 years. Or, even worse, I will be cursed to see another 35 years of violence, bloodshed, and horror. I will eat my last peach, I will savor my last coffee, I will cry over my last bit of bread, until all that is left is dust.
For the sake of the future, may this conference look past the inside, into the very core of our universe and at what makes life worth living, and may we find the bravery to protect it.

Debemos unirnos para buscar nuestras soberanías, como la única forma de avanzar efectivamente hacia el bienestar propio, común y salvar el planeta.

By being mindful of what we consume, we take care of who we are.

We must come together to seek our sovereignties, as the only way to effectively move toward our own well-being, the common good, and saving the planet.

Martha Giraldo, coordinadora de MINGAnet, migiraldo@gmail.com