Diverse and distributed food systems: A path to health, and human flourishing

James Samuel
5 min readSep 15, 2023

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Imagine a world where healthy people are eating nutritious foods, no one is going hungry, and the planet’s soils are being replenished and capture more carbon.

Lunch at a Six Figure Farming Tour event — 2016

It’s already happening and it needs to scale, if we are to turn the tide on the unintended consequences of an industrialised, monopolised, monetised, and mostly monocultural approach to producing food.

We can choose to rely on the centralised approach to food production and get our food at the drive through or the box store — and accept the consequences. Or we can make small (local) changes and be part of the (IMHO necessary) transformation to a distributed and diverse approach to producing food that nourishes all of our bodies — physical, emotional, intellectual, energetic, and archetypal (life purpose).

Diversity

Diversity fosters resilience, adaptability, creativity, and well-being in human, cultural and natural systems. Embracing and preserving diversity is essential for the continuation of natural, human and social systems.

I vividly recall at the age of 19, feeling joy at the beauty of the home garden of John Horrell, my employer and innovative agro-forestry farmer. I didn’t have words for what I was sensing, and wanted to understand why it was touching me so deeply. I asked John “What makes this garden so beautiful?” His simple reply: “The diversity of form.”

Diversity in nature (biodiversity) is crucial and I believe this is why humans perceive beauty in diverse natural systems.

Roebuck Farm 2017

If we look at the spectrum of soil based food production, on one end we have large scale monoculture requiring growers to fight nature’s inherent inclination to diversity. On the the other end we can find multi-layered systems of mostly perennial plants (food forests), growing healthy food, free of chemical inputs, as they build soil and capture carbon. Somewhere in between are the small scale market gardens (as above) growing a diversity of annual crops.

The core of my thesis is that distributed nodes of diverse, small scale food growing and distribution can result in increased health and well-being in the people who are fed from them. That this can make obsolete, the centralised model we have grown up with and become used to. I assert that if we change how we grow it, we will naturally change and improve how it is processed and distributed, and this will lay the foundation for a healthy society.

While writing this article I was confronted with perspectives that made me question just how big should I be aiming? How much do people care? How many people care? How many people have the energy and commitment to ride the ups and downs of life on the farm — dealing with the vagaries of weather and the challenges of working with complex natural systems?

It caused me to pause and realise that every major change, and I want to see major change in how we grow food and care for the planet, began with a step then grew because people responded to what they saw. The change is urgently needed, and can begin small and grow, not growing the size of each node so much as the number of nodes.

I’m a food systems alchemist, connecting ideas and people around a diversity of replicable projects that nurture soil and people. I bring people with skills and experience to those who are seeking a foundation of inspiration, information, knowledge and wisdom as they take their next step.

I am starting here.

One of the next events will be a Syntropic Agriculture workshop in the Motueka region. If you are interested in learning about this proven approach to fast tracking a multi-layered system of mostly perennial plants (food forest), then reach out to me — jmsinnz@gmail.com — and I’ll send you more information.

A path to health, and human flourishing

Greater human and soil health is a direct and obvious benefit. More people and institutions are recognising quality food is at the heart of human health, not just physical but mental as well. Quality, and that includes diversity of food types, is a natural outcome of growing food in living soil.

And it turns out that all information in the brain is input by bacteria and fungi. Human consciousness manifests as it does, because the human colon has created the most diverse ecosystem, interacting with a single neurology. Is nature speaking through us?

Soil biodiversity bolsters resilience against weather events and enhances water retention. This creates a virtuous cycle, culminating in increased carbon capture. Remarkably, soil holds nearly twice as much carbon than all the carbon in the atmosphere, plants and animals combined.

In contrast, our centralised food production systems focus on a narrow selection of plant types that can be mechanically produced year after year. Cereals, grains, sugars and vegetable oils (along with some flavouring) are the primary ingredients in the illusory diversity on our supermarket shelves.

In addition, the use of chemicals of all kinds (in an attempt to control nature’s inclination to diversity) kills the life (micro organisms) in the soil, destroying its structure and leaving it vulnerable to being washed away by rain or blown away on the wind. 1.5 billion metric tonnes of topsoil are lost annually in the USA alone, a rate that if allowed to continue, would see the end of US topsoil in 40 years!

Add to this devastation the impact of growing in dead soil, being nutritionally deficient food leading to an unhealthy population.

Increased connections are a natural outcome of a value exchange between growers and eaters in which growers get rewarded for their effort, and eaters get access to quality food. And when the distribution component is a collaborative effort, eaters connect with each other.

Centralised systems obscure the origins of our food. Eaters are anonymous figures in a profit-driven machine, detached from the food’s true source.

Opportunities for people to align with their life purpose. When there is a diversity of food nodes individuals can find their niche. They might share knowledge about plants’ nutritional or medicinal value, guide growers to cultivate the plants their community needs. Or propagate plants or optimise logistics or communication systems.

As people are appropriately rewarded for playing their part in vibrant local food economies, they can enjoy the whole-being benefits of engaging in right-livelihood.

In centralised systems mechanisation and automation reduces the variety of roles required, and stifle experimentation, innovation, and diversity.

Possibilities for human evolution. Yes, collaborative, small-scale enterprises create environments of increased trust. Recognising our interdependence nurtures a commitment to one another’s transformation and growth, and enjoy more high level fun!

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James Samuel
James Samuel

Written by James Samuel

I am a food systems alchemist, connecting ideas and people to build replicable projects which nurture people and soil.

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