GROUNDED Live - 2025: Matthew Evans - What Your Food Ate. Milk and Meat & Why Farming Systems Matter

In this episode of GROUNDED Live, we share another unedited session recorded at GROUNDED Festival 2025, on farm in Bridgetown, Western Australia.

This session is presented by Matthew Evans — GROUNDED founder and director, farmer, chef, author and host of the GROUNDED Live podcast.

For a long time, soil was treated as little more than a growing medium — a place to hold plants upright while inputs did the work. But we now understand something far deeper: how we treat soil is ultimately how we treat ourselves.

In this talk, You Are What Your Food Ate (subtitled Farming Systems Matter), Matthew explores the vital connections between soil biology, farming practices, animal health and human nutrition. He unpacks how living soils influence animal behaviour and growth, how nutrient density is shaped by farming systems, and why these relationships matter for the food we eat every day.

Bringing a chef’s perspective to soil health, Matthew also reflects on how farming systems influence not just nutrition, but flavour — reminding us that taste is one of the clearest signals of ecological health.

It’s a thoughtful, accessible and deeply grounded session that weaves together food, farming and human wellbeing — and invites us to reconsider what’s really on our plates.

Settle in and enjoy this session with Matthew Evans on GROUNDED Live.

GROUNDED Festival is a cross between a food festival, a farming conference and a field day. It combines science and technology with ancient wisdom, provides a respectful place for lively discussion, an audience as interesting as the speakers and an excellent menu of local food, drinks and music, all on a beautiful, regeneratively-managed farm.

GROUNDED is also Australia's only annual, roaming food and farming festival, held in a different farm location every year, so each festival is a unique, unmissable event celebrating local expertise and culture with an inspiring line up of speakers.

In 2026, with the support of the local Upper Barwon and Central Otway Landcare Networks, following successful festivals in Tasmania and Western Australia, GROUNDED FESTIVAL will be held at leading regenerative farm, Yan Yan Gurt West, in the Victorian Otway Ranges, two hours from Melbourne in an area renowned for regenerative agroforestry, tourism, local hospitality and great food and wine.

Tickets are on sale now - head to the GROUNDED website for information on speakers, the location, and to secure your spot today.