Loren Cardeli - FOOD IS BROKEN AND DYING

Loren Cardeli is a food sovereignty activist confronting the unjust power in our global food systems—systems that are crippling the well-being of people who grow our food. He asks us to look at the frameworks of our minds and says "To learn, we must unlearn."

He is the Founder and President of A Growing Culture—an activist collective and nonprofit you must catch on IG (Run. Don’t walk)

I’ll wait…

@agrowingculture’s posts center farmer justice. The humanity of this issue is important for too many reasons, but one stat makes it really easy to get:

“Right now, we have a food system [where] 1.2 billion people go to bed hungry,” Loren says. “70% of them are farmers. 70% of the hungry are the ones growing our food.”

Drink that in. 

These hard truths have the power to wake us up and garner global solidarity for folks who need support.

“We have no solution,” Loren says, “but I can point to 10,000 people that do, and none of them look like me. We champion those folks.”

Then he says, “There are no voiceless people. People say [to me], ‘Oh, you give voice to the voiceless.’ No. There's no voiceless. There's only silenced.”

This episode is in honor of the silenced and dedicated to the actions we are capable of together.

WORKS:
- Founder and President of A Growing Culture—an activist collective and 501c(3) nonprofit working towards a future of food sovereignty
- Keynote speaker, addressing agricultural issues through the lens of economics, political science, and life sciences while promoting farmer-led research and innovation for the purpose of helping farmers throughout the world create sustainable, self-driving futures.
- AGC PROJECT: “SEED IS POWER” - Seed is Power is a fund to ensure that seeds stay in the hands of the people. These funds support seed savers on their own terms. It’s designed to disrupt the status quo of philanthropy that often inadvertently harms communities. Instead, it creates a reciprocal system that redistributes power, building equity and community among seed savers.
- AGC PROJECT: “HUNGER FOR JUSTICE” - Hunger for Justice is a storytelling series designed to center justice in food system dialogues. The series is an opportunity to shift our focus away from symptoms, like hunger, and towards the injustices at the root of our failing food system. AGC provides an emergent and interactive global platform for movements on the frontlines of the struggle for food sovereignty to connect with broader audiences and with each other. Until every last million of us hungers no more, we must hunger for justice.
- AGC PROJECT: PEASANT AND INDIGENOUS PRESS - a bi-monthly forum, media workshops, a monthly dispatch, and a journalist fellowship program, Peasant and Indigenous Press centers and connects Indigenous and peasant communities with media and cultivates a more holistic and nuanced storytelling ecosystem.
- AGC PROJECT: BIPOC FARMER LEGAL FUND - The BIPOC Farmer Legal Fund provides pro-bono legal services to majority BIPOC-owned agricultural entities to create pathways for agricultural futures.

 

TOOLS:
- Access to the most empowering definition of activism you’ve ever heard
- Reframes for how to lift up voices that aren’t yours
- Reminders of our true humanity and connectivity 
- Stories that emphazie why we say “If the community is unwell, we’re all unwell.”
- Root definitions of words that will teach you how language distorts reality 
- Questions to ask yourself about belief versus fact and what narratives are running the behind the scenes of your daily life
- Reframes for how to think about power and where it belongs 

 

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

BETTER is recorded on the unceded and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and has been stewarded by them since time immemorial.
 

BETTER with Mark Brand is produced by Pamela Rothenberg of I HEAR YOU STUDIOS and Adam Karch with Orbyt Media