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Foreword
abundance not only sustains the health of our ecosystems but also enriches the nutritional value of our food.Education and food are two universal rights. Everyone deserves to eat nourishing food. And everyone goes to school (or at least ought to), and public education has the potential to reach every person on the planet. This proposition would not only bring money to local communities but would bring the essential values of stewardship, nourishment, interconnected-ness, diversity, and, I dare say, democracy to the next generation, directly through the cafeteria doors. It would activate students every single day in the way they yearn for, giving them an instant connection to each other at the table and, through the ingredients on their plate, to the greater world.I can say all of this with conviction because I have seen firsthand that it is possible to create a program that rethinks food and academics from the ground up and have it widely adopted. Thirty years ago, I started the Edible Schoolyard Project at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California, by creating garden and kitchen classrooms to teach all academic subjects to students. Because of the human values this proj-ect celebrated—stewardship of the land, nourishment, community, diversity, beauty—the Edible Schoolyard Project has inspired a network of over 6,200 like-minded programs around the world.In 2018, Camilla unveiled west~bourne, a groundbreaking zero-waste dining spot in the heart of New York City, earning praise not only for her delectable dishes but also for her mindful, forward-looking, community- driven ethos. Camilla emerged as a visionary, guiding a venture that upholds ethics, innovation, and local involvement, all while championing the cause of farmers and environmental stewardship.We have to think completely differently about our food system—about the relationship we have with our producers and the responsibility we owe each other. It will take a total paradigm shift. In essence, regenerative agriculture offers us a profound opportunity to recalibrate our relation-ship with the Earth. It invites us to reimagine our role as stewards of the land, working in harmony with nature’s rhythms rather than against them. By harnessing the surplus carbon in our atmosphere, we can breathe new life into our soils, cultivating a future of abundance and vitality.As we stand at the precipice of unprecedented environmental chal-lenges, let us heed the call of regenerative agriculture. Let us embrace the soil as a sacred trust, a reservoir of hope from which the seeds of a sus-tainable future shall sprout. For in the embrace of healthy soil lies our greatest salvation—a beacon of resilience illuminating the path toward a thriving planet for generations to come.
—A W