Food systems strategist and storyteller Loren Cardeli joins FutureKind to illuminate how food is not just sustenance—it’s power, politics, and culture. As founder of A Growing Culture, Loren works alongside peasant and Indigenous communities around the world to challenge industrial agriculture’s dominance and restore narrative sovereignty to those who feed us. In this episode, Loren and host Megan Westgate explore the root causes of food injustice, from seed laws to social erosion, and invite listeners to consider how reclaiming agency begins with listening, solidarity, and a deeper understanding of who holds power—and why. This is a conversation about food as world-building, and about remembering what we already know.

For more information: https://www.agrowingculture.org

Timestamps

[00:03:20] — Reimagining connection: from transactional work calls to human relationship

[00:06:00] — Growing up in New York with a speech disorder and a family of deep dinner-table dialogue

[00:12:00] — Learning language through farming: from Vermont dairy to Central American slash-and-burn agriculture

[00:14:00] — The death of a child and the turning point: when agriculture takes life instead of nurturing it

[00:17:00] — Environmental erosion starts with social erosion

[00:21:00] — Agriculture as world-building: reclaiming agency over how food shapes society

[00:24:00] — Food security vs food sovereignty: redefining what it means to be fed

[00:27:00] — The myth of industrial agriculture: who really feeds the world?

[00:32:00] — Nature’s logic vs empire logic: why extractive systems are energetically unsustainable

[00:38:00] — Yield isn’t everything: calorie delivery and the illusion of efficiency

[00:44:00] — The war on seed: how UPOV laws criminalize biodiversity and ancestral foodways

[00:49:00] — Beyond the ballot: reclaiming political agency in everyday life

[00:54:00] — Vote with your dollar? Why that narrative is anti-democratic

[00:57:00] — Food cost vs food value: how low prices hurt the people who grow our food

[01:00:00] — An invitation to listen: how solidarity and storytelling can reshape the food system

https://www.agrowingculture.org

Music Credits:
Rise by Yaima from the album C E R E M O N I A
Gaia Nectar by Masood Ali Khan from the album The Yoga Sessions, in collaboration with Yoga Organix Records

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