Hidden in Plain Sight

Taking inspiration from the networks in nature that we are all a part of.

When we talk about the future of food, we often look forwards.

At Food On The Edge, a food symposium in Malta, I asked a room of chefs and people from across the food industry to look around instead.

My belief is that the future of food is hidden in plain sight. It is in the soil under our feet, in the faces of the people who grow our food, and in the care that already exists between us, and we have simply got used to walking past it, forgetting what we are in fact a part of.

The systems we need already exist around us, most clearly in nature, where a hedgerow, a woodland floor or the soil under a meadow each runs on exchange: trees pass sugars to fungi in the soil and the fungi pass water and minerals back, fallen leaves become the nutrients the trees draw up again, and every organism has a function in keeping the whole going. We are part of that exchange, from the carbon in our bodies to the microbes in our gut, and what we understand of it is only the current edge of the science, with discoveries still being made. If we want better food systems, we can take our lead from the ones that surround us and that we already belong to, where everything gives and receives in a balance that holds.

This piece follows the shape of that talk. It begins with what the wild plants taught me and how they led me to the systems around us, moving on to what twelve people from farming, cooking and foraging told me when I asked them nine questions, and comes to what responsible foraging asks of us and what we can all do.

What plants taught me

I came to questions about plant chemistry as a chef, guided initially of course by flavour, and it was the plants themselves that carried me from the kitchen towards the wider systems they live in.

At Robin Wylde and Lilac, the two restaurants I founded in Lyme Regis, wild food gave us a world of untamed flavour that simply put was more exciting to me than working with cultivated produce. It wasn't that I didn't like vegetables grown by someone else, because believe me I did, I get excited about anything that has been grown with love, it's just that instinctively there was something unpredictable about wild foods that I seemed to get a real buzz out of working with. I enjoyed that wild plants were bitter or astringent or tannic and I relished the chance to explore the possibilities of those flavours, and the process of bringing them into harmony. Crops bred for sweetness and mildness have often lost much of that bitterness, and the compounds behind it, which wild plants keep.

I loved the idea that I could make ice creams that tasted like trees, or dishes from fleeting ingredients growing in misty corners of the local estuary, a kind of brief and ephemeral form of poetry to the land.

I foraged nearly all of the wild ingredients that went onto our menus, and taught my chefs to forage too, and then together we began to explore what each plant could do, looking at every way we could preserve it and draw out its flavour, from extraction at varying temperatures to fermenting, dehydrating, curing, frying, roasting, raw, fat, acid, salt, sweetness. Each one was another touch point for flavour, and the kitchen became a kind of alchemical playground. It felt much like an apothecary and it was during that process that the questions naturally arose. Were the plants we were picking safe to serve, what was in the soil they grew from, why did one of them leave a scratch at the back of the throat?

The bitterness that so often comes with wild plants turned out to be the taste of the plant's own chemistry. Beyond what they need to grow, plants make compounds such as alkaloids, glycosides, terpenoids and polyphenols, many of which defend them, since a plant is rooted where it germinates and cannot step aside from a hungry insect or a fungal infection. We taste many of these compounds as bitterness, and the tannins as the dry pull of astringency. Once we have eaten them they work in our bodies: our gut microbes break polyphenols down into metabolites with anti-inflammatory effects and benefits for our gut lining; people with the highest intakes have been found to have a lower risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cognitive decline. There is a biological idea, called xenohormesis, that plants raise their polyphenol production when they are stressed, so these compounds work as chemical warnings, and the animals that eat them could then use the signal to switch on their own survival and repair responses. There is much entanglement in the plant world, and this really is just a fraction. With all this to find out, perhaps you can see how we had unintentionally stumbled into the world of plant chemistry and medicine, and once we had stepped through that gateway there was no turning back. It felt fully magical, and made me question everything I had ever relied on or been told. There was a power, an autonomy, an independence in that.

And beyond this, is the point at which I found it an intoxicating practice - and I mean, in the best conceivable way. Each plant was protecting itself against its own environmental stressors - for instance, no two hawthorn trees faced exactly the same challenges - varying levels of shelter, perhaps one more exposed than the other, different soil and surrounding terrain, one perhaps on the side of a busy road, the other deep in woodland. The result? A divergece in different protective compounds, and for us as humans, access to a different range of plant chemistry and therefore a potential diversity of unseen benefits. I began to eat a little of this, a leaf of that, as I passed the edible plants I knew about, tasting the differences and viewing this as nature's magic little pill. Screw those green powders we are being sold to improve our lives.

From flavour to medicine to safety

Every day a restaurant is open someone asks about allergens, and we realised, when we tried to work out a guest's needs, that for the wild plants on our menu we often had very little to go on.

Jack-by-the-hedge, Alliaria petiolata, belongs to Brassicaceae, the mustard family, so we took the cautious view and kept it away from anyone with a mustard allergy.

Meadowsweet contains salicylic acid, the compound behind aspirin, which mattered on the day a guest with an aspirin allergy came to eat with us.

Sweet woodruff sometimes left our throats scratchy, and we wondered whether that was an early sign of something, since woodruff and sweet vernal grass are both rich in coumarin, the compound behind the vanilla-ey scent. In the fresh plant the coumarin is bound to sugar and is released as the leaves dry, which is where the fragrance comes from, and when damp plant material goes mouldy, fungi can convert it into dicoumarol, a blood thinner. That is well documented in mouldy sweet clover hay, where it poisoned cattle in the 1920s, and in mouldy sweet vernal grass hay and silage in Australia. I could find no case reported in woodruff, which is not the same as knowing it cannot happen, since woodruff and sweet clover carry the same kind of sugar-bound coumarin, and it is the kind of gap we kept running into. It also didn't explain why our throats would sometimes feel scratchy - was that a specific compound developed due to the environment in which we had picked that particular batch? Conversations with ethnobotanist Robin Harford led me to learn that plants also hybridise and so the answer was always informed handling and small quantities only, for safety but also for health. You wouldn't eat a massive plate of cherries and expect to feel ok, and the same applies, even more so, to these uncultivated wild foods.

In the instance of woodruff, we concluded after much research (only a small amount shared here in this article) that we should treat it as a matter of handling and dose: dry the leaves quickly and completely, and use very little in one go. We also determined that, since the risk was centred around the creation of mould, storage was potentially the highest risk area, with airtight containers as essential as the humidity and general conditions, because conversion occurs when mould grows and once dicoumarol is present it can't be undone. Furthermore, Austria's food safety agency advises adults to stay below about 3 g of fresh woodruff a day and the tolerable daily intake for coumarin is 0.1 mg per kilo of body weight. Anyone who is pregnant or on blood thinners should take advice first.

Suffice it to say, no single resource brought together the allergens, the active compounds, traditional use and the current research for chefs. So I set out to compile it. That has become the basis for my book, The Wild Between Us, the practical resource needed by all kitchens, which I am working on as we speak.

Where do we fit and what role do we play in this?

Around 85% of flowering plants live in partnership with mycorrhizal fungi, so the soil around a root is a living community of which the plant is only one part. The pattern is clear: a network in nature in constant exchange, receiving and reciprocating. Each plant has a function. Ernst Götsch, a syntropic farmer in Brazil, designs his land as a layered community where each plant has a job, the way it would in nature, working with the system instead of overriding it, and the question I took from him was this: if every organism has a function, then what is our function as human beings?

We look at the systems in nature and somehow critically exclude ourselves from the argument, when we are inside them too. We breathe the same air, drink the same water and eat food that becomes us and is returned to the earth, in constant exchange with the world around us. It may be invisible to our eyes, but it is happening, and it asks us to tune in, and in doing so to recognise that we are not alone and are connected to something greater. If we take inspiration from nature's design, perhaps we can begin to communicate and operate in ways that support our functions.

An exchange only holds if both sides give, so if we are going to take part we have to ask what we need and what we can offer in return. Between people that begins with asking each other how we are and saying what we need. Towards the land it begins with education, because a duty not to over-harvest cannot be kept by people who were never taught what is at stake. That is where I think the missing link sits: we are not taught that we are part of nature and have a role within it, or where our food comes from, and we do not value the planet we live on enough, and to change that we have to slow down, step away from our screens and tune back in.

If the question Götsch left me with is what our own job is, part of the answer is that we each play a different part, as the plants do. Some of us are pioneers and torch bearers, some campaign and work with policy makers, some tell stories with beautiful produce, look after people, or run the accounts so that the cogs keep turning. We do not all have to do the same thing to create change, but we do need to work towards a shared goal.

It might all feel futile when the problems seem so big, but the more we can all do to work towards collective appreciation for our environment and each other, the closer we move to the harmony we have been looking for, and each small act of care becomes part of the exchange that holds the whole thing together.

What I asked

I needed to know what other people thought about the themes that keep recurring for me, and what they believe is missing.

So I sent nine questions to some of the faces in the food industry, covering what the future of food needs most, the missing link, reconnection, what people need to keep going, community, inspiration and burnout, and how people work with the natural world.

Twelve people answered: Sophie Gregory, an organic dairy farmer; Claudiu Oprea, a permaculture educator and chef; Harold Villarosa, a chef who grew up in the South Bronx; David Knapman, head chef and co-owner of Glebe House; Will Greig, co-founder of Pipers Farm; Stewart Dodd, chief executive of River Cottage; Dom Moldenhauer, head chef at River Cottage; Chris Onions, a chef and event company owner; Chiara Tomasoni, a chef; Sammie Longhorn, a forager; Charlotte Vincent, a chef, and Vincent Lebon and Millie Domini, who run Ferme L'Apogée, a winery and restaurant in the Dordogne. They did not all say exactly the same thing, and they kept coming back to being seen, being listened to, and looking after each other. Every answer is at the end of this piece.

The people we cannot see

Asked about the missing link, Sophie said we have lost sight of each other, and that "conversations about food can happen without anyone who actually grows it in the room." Claudiu told me, "The people who grow our food are almost always invisible." Harold said we have turned food into a commodity, and David Knapman that its value has been reduced to only ££. Will Greig pointed to schools and hospitals that spend public money buying meat from a local wholesaler who sources it from international commodity markets, while other public money supports local farming. Imagine if we joined those two things together. Dom added the honest complication, that if you are on a tight budget with two kids you buy the bacon and bread you can afford and nobody can blame you, so "we need to make the better choice the easier choice, not the privileged choice." Chris Onions gave the shortest answer to what the future of food needs most, and perhaps the best: classless empathy.

The people who hold it up are tired

On burnout, nearly everyone said yes. Sophie said, "You can spend all day surrounded by people and still feel that you are carrying a lot on your own." Stewart Dodd said "being the CEO is a lonely world." Harold said we need to stop pretending burnout is some badge of honour in this industry, and Dom said "many times," adding that people wanting fair pay for fair hours "is exposing how much the industry relied on people giving more than they were paid for." Only David Knapman said no. What would have helped was honest conversations, regular check-ins, and trust within a team so that you know the people you work with have your back. Will put it best: we talk a great deal about resilient food systems, but those systems depend on resilient people, and we need to look after them too.

What holds it together

The answer to the community question was close to unanimous. Claudiu said, "Community is the most important thing. Relationships are everything." Chris Onions said, "It's everything always and forever." Dom described a living network of people who grow, catch, produce, cook and eat together, and was honest that it is a privilege most people do not have, while Vincent and Millie find theirs by opening their farm and garden to the public and through a rotation of friends who help on each other's land. Asked what inspires them, people talked about cows, children asking brilliant questions and wanting to build a bigger table for the next generation. Chris wrote two words, "You do!" I am keeping that one.

Set beside the hedgerow, these answers describe the same thing: an exchange that holds only while each part is seen and looked after, and that thins out when people are left to carry things alone.

Historically, things have been different

Community has long been bound up with the table, and for most of history the table was shared, in great halls, village inns and the table d'hôte, where one meal was served to everyone at a long communal table. Individual tables arrived in Paris in the 1760s, when Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau began serving soup on small marble tables near the Louvre, and Diderot, eating there in 1767, remarked that one eats alone. The restaurant we take for granted is only around 250 years old. Chefs know this better than most, since family meal before service is one of the last places where a working kitchen still eats together.

Taking only what we need

The duty not to over-harvest rests on education, so I asked what training people had been given in wild food. The answers were a spread, from Chris, who learned from elders and grandparents ("You don't need to do a course to tell the stories of the stars"), to Millie's weekend Forest School, to Vincent, who does not forage because his knowledge is too limited. Dom was taught that just because something is edible, it does not need to be eaten. Harold put it well: "Good cooking starts with curiosity. Responsible cooking starts with knowledge."

This is the part of my talk that I most want to be heard. Traditionally a household foraged a little of what it needed for itself, or families got together and shared the load, or one person picked something and traded it with a neighbour. Nobody needed a lot, and nobody needed the same thing, since there are a million different plants out there and a diversity of interests to match. Wild plants fed a household and looked after it too, bitter greens in spring and teas and syrups for the ailments of the year, and whatever could not be eaten fresh was dried, fermented or pickled to carry a family through winter. Today there is real value in chefs and restaurants serving wild food, because it brings storytelling and memory to the plate and gets people excited about the natural world, and so connected to it, and so more likely to value it. That is why it has to be done well.

My own line is that commercial foraging, taking wild plants at volume to sell, is mostly a no. If I pick something, I do not want you to know that I have been there. I want to leave enough for the plant to regenerate, enough for the animals, and enough for the idea that other people might be out picking too, because it is not all just for me.

What responsible foraging looks like

The Association of Foragers sets out Principles of Practice for its members, and what follows draws on them and on how I work.

• Be completely certain of identification before anything is eaten or served, and say so when you are not.

• Know the law where you are picking and ask the landowner's permission. In the UK it is an offence to uproot a wild plant without authority, some protected plants cannot be sold at all, and picking for sale without permission can amount to theft. The rules differ between countries, so check them where you are.

• Take a little and leave enough, for the plant to regenerate, for seed to set, for the animals and for other people.

• Avoid permanent damage to the plant or the place, and rotate where you pick.

• Watch what your harvesting does over time, and change your methods if you see harm.

  
  

If you cannot forage yourself, vet the person who does

My firm assertion is that a restaurant should either forage for itself, so that it knows it is doing so with good intent, in good and ever growing knowledge, respectfully and in line with those principles, or, if it employs or buys from a forager, vet that forager strictly in order to protect nature. I do not agree that it is acceptable to sell wild foods without some education attached to it, due to the reasons I set out in this piece. Hospitality is putting standards in place to look after its people, and VERiFAIR is one new example, an independent benchmark for how businesses treat their staff. Wild food has nothing like it. Commercial foraging is wildly unregulated, and chefs have never been given the education to ask the right questions.

Ask your forager:

• Are you a member of the Association of Foragers, or the equivalent where you work?

• Where do you pick, and do you have permission?

• How much do you take, and what do you leave? Do you leave seed?

• Do you cut or uproot?

• How do you identify what you pick, and what insurance and food hygiene certification do you hold?

• Do you uphold any practices that support the land or do you responsibly educate as part of your work?

There have been reports in the UK for years, often cited in Facebook groups, of companies going into woodland with bin bags and stripping it of wild garlic or other valuable and coveted edibles. There is one forager in particular that is prevalent in this practice whose team are often spotted harvesting without abiding by these good practices, and then selling to some of the best restaurants in the country.

Are they harvesting sympathetically? Are they taking all the seeds, or leaving some to regrow next year? Overharvesting damages the ecology of the place and disrupts the environment around it. Mushroom season brings the same horror stories, with woodlands decimated, and it gives the good foragers a bad name they do not deserve, because most leave a place so that you would never know they had been.

If you are a chef in a restaurant, and you buy from some such commercial forager, then it is your duty to ask questions rather than forming assumptions that every forager holds the same personal code of environmental conduct.

Wild foods might be something exciting to have on your menu, but unless you are versed in who, what, where and why, you have a way to go.

Use wild foods, by all means, but conduct your research, ask questions and hold others accountable.

Educate the room

Part of the duty is education. As a restaurant you need to be able to teach your staff what you are serving and to answer your guests when they ask, and also to tell them where it came from and why it was picked responsibly, because people interested in food inevitably ask. There is a great story to tell here, and it is one that with the right handling has the power to inspire interest in the natural world. We protect what we know. None of this is about policing anyone. It is about having the right knowledge to share, and to protect this incredible planet that we live on.

What I saw at Food On The Edge

What inspired me most at the symposium was that everybody was doing something responsible. Albert Franch spoke about the vision and the action behind Nolla, his zero-waste restaurant in Helsinki. Matt Orlando shared how he engages his guests with the produce that he doesn't allow to waste and instead ferments or preserves in plain sight. Will Goldfarb, named the World's Best Pastry Chef by the World's 50 Best Restaurants, shared his team's connection to the Ayurvedic plants growing around his restaurant in Bali, and how he has woven their medicinal qualities into his dessert menu. It was striking to see pennywort among them, since it is one I chose to talk about as well, from a different perspective. Nikolai from Kadeau, the three-Michelin-starred Danish restaurant in Copenhagen, spoke about their approach to cooking, and Nicholas from Tri works in a tiny village in eastern Denmark, a beautiful and quite isolated place, deeply connected to the landscape around him. I met Sandor Katz, the fermentation guru whose book I have owned for longer than I can remember, and Josh Eggleton, who runs an educational bus that takes a hydroponic set-up for children within the Bristol community to show them where food comes from and how it grows. Behind the symposium are JP, Abigail and Mel and the Food On The Edge team, who have committed around ten years to running a symposium whose purpose is to create better networks.

What we can all do

There are three small actions we can all take, and the more of us who take them, the better.

Turn to the wild, just a little. Many of you already use wild plants, but there is always more to learn. Be curious, look around, learn a new plant, taste it and see if you can use it, and better still cook it for someone. If you buy wild food, ask where it came from.

Ask people what they need. Maybe it is something you can help with, or maybe you know someone who can. Sophie said what helps most is "someone checking in beyond 'How are the cows?'"

Eat together. Share your resources, ask someone over, go and eat with somebody else, and share your table. This is how we transmit both care and information. Family meal counts.

The future of food is hidden in plain sight.

Appendix: The full results

The questions

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

8. (Chefs) Do you think it is important to serve local, seasonal or organic food? If so, why?

9. (Chefs) If you serve wild foods, have you received training or sought education in wild foods and their allergens and medicinal actions, as well as how to use them for flavour?

   
   

Full answers

Sophie Gregory

Organic dairy farmer and first-generation farmer. Helped start the Organic Dairy Round Table.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

People who care, and a food system that enables them to keep caring. About the soil, the animals, the people producing food and the people eating it.

We ask a lot of farmers, often quite rightly, but we also need farms to be viable businesses. If we want good food produced with care, the price paid to the farmer needs to reflect what it takes to produce it. You cannot keep asking people to do more with less indefinitely.

For me, the future also needs more curiosity and less judgement. There are different ways to farm, and we make much more progress when we listen to each other.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

I think we have lost sight of each other. Farmers, chefs and consumers all depend on one another, but we do not always understand the decisions or pressures each faces.

As farmers, we can become so focused on producing food that we forget to explain it. Equally, conversations about food can happen without anyone who actually grows it in the room.

I would love more conversations that start with: what can we learn from each other? A chef understanding the seasons and realities of a farm, and a farmer understanding what a kitchen needs, can create something really valuable.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

Getting onto farms and meeting the people behind their food. There is something powerful about seeing a cow being milked, touching the soil or being able to ask a question without feeling silly.

We have a classroom on our farm where we welcome school visits and other businesses. Farming connects to so many subjects: science, maths, geography, food, business. It makes those subjects real.

But we also need to take farming to people who will never come through our gates. Social media, conversations with chefs and events all help. We need to make that connection accessible, rather than assume everyone has the time, money or opportunity to seek it out.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work?

A viable business, a good team and enough certainty to plan ahead. Farming involves making decisions now that might take years to pay back, so constantly changing policy and expectations make that difficult.

I would benefit from more time and support for the work we do beyond producing milk, whether that is welcoming schools, mentoring or contributing to wider industry discussions. I care deeply about it, but it still has to fit around the cows, the business and family life.

Sometimes what helps most is being listened to early enough to shape a decision, rather than being asked to make it work afterwards.

5. How important is community to your work, and where do you find it?

Hugely important. I am a first generation farmer and there is so much I have learnt because someone was willing to share their experience or give me a chance.

I find community in our team, other farmers, being part of a farmer owned cooperative and the wider industry work I do.

Helping to start the Organic Dairy Round Table came from wanting to bring people together around shared challenges. We do not have to agree on everything to work towards something useful.

I also find it in mentoring young women who want their own dairy businesses. Having someone believe that you belong in farming can make a real difference.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

The cows, seeing the farm improve and watching people grow in confidence. There is something very satisfying about making a small change and seeing it make life better for an animal, a member of the team or the land.

I also love seeing that moment when someone connects with farming. A child asking a brilliant question, or someone saying they had never thought about where their milk came from before.

I want my children, and other young people, to see farming as a future they could choose. A worthwhile, exciting career where they can make a difference.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work?

Yes, there have definitely been times when I have felt overwhelmed and alone. You can spend all day surrounded by people and still feel that you are carrying a lot on your own.

When your home, livelihood and identity are all tied to the farm, it can be difficult to switch off. There is always another job, and being passionate about your work does not mean you have endless capacity.

What helps is practical support, being able to say things are difficult without feeling judged, and someone checking in beyond "How are the cows?"

Sometimes you need someone to take a job off your hands. Sometimes you need them to listen. We need to look after the people producing our food with the same care we expect them to give everything else.

Claudiu Oprea

Permaculture educator and chef in London. Grew up in Romania.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

It needs soil builders. Small, niche food growers. It needs a diverse approach to growing food, especially in urban areas, where we could use every available space for production: urban farms, rooftops, mushroom growing and a whole array of crops. I believe in a decentralised system that supports the biodiversity in the soil, because healthy soil produces healthy, diverse food, which in turn feeds our microbiomes. And so it becomes a spiral of abundance where everyone wins.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

Absolutely. The people who grow our food are almost always invisible. In heavily urbanised places most food comes from supermarkets, so its provenance is unknown. There is also a gap in skills. We may grow a whole array of produce but lack the knowledge to process it at its peak or to make the most of a bumper harvest. Growing up in Romania, we pickled, fermented or turned into sauces whatever was seasonal and abundant, so we could enjoy it through the winter and later in the year. Especially in the West, I feel that knowledge has been lost.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

Knowing who grows it. Putting a face to the people who make our food possible. When we were in France, we sourced our fruit and vegetables from local growers. We visited their land, met them in person and built a relationship with them and with the place. It became a partnership based on mutual trust, sharing beautiful produce. Stepping away from multinational corporations that extract from already depleted land is a great place to start.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you'd benefit from?

Financial support to set up more food growing spaces in London, where I live. From there I would like to create a living library, a resource that inspires people to work with produce creatively, connecting the whole cycle of growing, harvesting, preparing, sharing and fermenting food to extend its life and improve its nutritional value. I would also benefit from access to spaces where I can run workshops, and from being paid fairly. In London a chef earns around £20 an hour for demanding, exhausting work. With rents in the thousands that is simply not enough. A proper living wage would make all the difference.

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

Community is the most important thing. Relationships are everything. I find it by talking about my work and doing it at every opportunity. I connect with organisations and people who resonate with me. I also feel there is a kind of karmic pull: people who are open to learning tend to find one another, drawn together by medicinal plants, foraging, fermenting, cooking in nature or simply walking together. These shared experiences help us embody a real sense of community.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

It is both a passion and a duty. Within my communities I see a real lack of knowledge and experience in working with food. Everyone wants better digestion, wants their nutritional needs met, wants to understand where their food comes from. Yet there is little capacity for this and so creating resources available for free or at low cost would be my dream.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

I have felt burnt out and alone. What would have helped is building an awareness of the signals that lead to burnout into the way we work, then addressing them collectively, without guilt or shame about needing rest when the body asks for it. Trust and skill sharing within the team so we all know how to run the kitchen would have helped too: knowing that the people you work with have your back. We need a culture that supports us in meeting our needs, one that understands those needs change over time. That takes constant communication, regular check-ins with each other, a shared openness to feeling good and resourced in our work. What that looks like is different for everyone.

Harold Villarosa

Chef. Born in the Philippines, raised in the South Bronx; now cooking in the Bay Area.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

The future of food needs more humanity and less ego.

We've spent decades chasing innovation, awards, recognition, and the next big thing. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that food is supposed to nourish people, bring communities together, and tell stories.

I've cooked in some of the best kitchens in the world, and I've also seen some of the most beautiful food come out of small neighborhood kitchens where nobody knows the chef's name.

The future isn't necessarily about reinventing food. It's about making good food accessible, respecting the people who grow it, and creating a system where cooks, farmers, and communities can actually thrive.

Great food shouldn't be a privilege. That's where I stand.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook, and eat?

Absolutely. It's the relationship between the people growing the food, the people cooking it, and the people eating it.

We've turned food into a commodity instead of treating it as something that connects us.

Growing up in the Philippines and later in the South Bronx, food was never just about what was on the plate. It was about survival, family, culture, and community.

Today, we have chefs who can tell you everything about a technique but sometimes can't tell you much about the farmer who grew their vegetables.

We need to close that gap.

The farmer, the dishwasher, the line cook, and the person sitting at the table are all part of the same story. Nobody should be invisible in that process.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

We need to bring food education back into everyday life.

Take people to farms. Bring farmers into restaurants. Teach kids how to grow something, even if it's just herbs in a window.

I grew up understanding food through necessity. You cooked what was available, you respected ingredients, and you didn't waste things because you couldn't afford to.

There's something powerful about that mentality.

Restaurants can play a bigger role by telling the stories behind their ingredients without turning everything into a marketing campaign.

Not everything needs a fancy explanation. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "This came from a farmer down the road, and here's why we're cooking it."

That's how you build appreciation.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

Sustainability for the people doing the work.

I've spent more than two decades in kitchens, and one thing I've learned is that passion doesn't pay the bills, and dedication shouldn't mean sacrificing your health or family.

Chefs need access to resources, mentorship, financial opportunities, and spaces where creativity can exist without constant financial pressure.

I'd love to see more collaboration between chefs, farmers, educators, and organizations that genuinely want to change the food system.

Personally, I want to continue building restaurants and opportunities that create real careers for people, especially young cooks and immigrants who might not have the connections to get through certain doors.

I know what it feels like to have to fight for a seat at the table.

Now I'm interested in building a bigger table.

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

Community is everything.

I'm a Filipino immigrant who grew up in the South Bronx. My understanding of food didn't come from white tablecloths. It came from neighborhood bodegas, family kitchens, street vendors, and the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities that helped shape who I am.

Those experiences taught me that food is a language everybody understands.

I've worked in Copenhagen, New York, and across different cities, but the thing that always stays with me is the people.

I find community in kitchens, at farmers markets, through purveyors, and in conversations with cooks who genuinely care about their craft.

The restaurant industry can be competitive, but I've never believed that success needs to happen at someone else's expense.

If one of us makes it, we should be opening doors for the next person.

That's the New York in me. You don't forget where you came from.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

My upbringing, my family, and the people who gave me opportunities when I didn't have much.

Growing up in the Philippines and eventually finding my way to New York shaped everything about how I see food.

Cooking gave me a voice before I really knew how to use one.

I've had the privilege of working alongside some incredible chefs and experiencing kitchens that changed the way I think about food. But what inspires me now is different from what inspired me twenty years ago.

Back then, I wanted to prove I belonged.

Today, I want to build something that matters.

I want my son to understand where he comes from. I want young cooks, especially immigrants and kids from neighborhoods like mine, to see that their stories and their food have value.

And I still get inspired by the simplest things. A great bowl of rice, somebody cooking over fire, a grandmother making a dish she's been making for fifty years.

That's real cooking to me.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

Absolutely. And I think we need to stop pretending burnout is some badge of honor in this industry.

I've given more than twenty years of my life to cooking. I've experienced incredible highs, but I've also experienced the isolation, pressure, and exhaustion that come with constantly trying to perform at a high level.

For a long time, the kitchen culture was simple: keep your head down, work harder, and don't complain.

That's not sustainable.

I've had moments when I needed to step away and reevaluate what success actually meant to me.

What could have helped? More honest conversations about mental health, stronger support systems, better leadership, and a culture where asking for help isn't seen as weakness.

We also need to recognize that chefs have lives outside the kitchen.

I'm a father. I'm a partner. I'm a human being before I'm a chef.

The next generation deserves an industry that doesn't require them to destroy themselves just to prove they're passionate.

We can demand excellence without sacrificing humanity.

8. Do you think it is important to serve local, seasonal, or organic food? If so, why?

Absolutely, but I think we need to approach it with common sense instead of treating it like a luxury label.

Local and seasonal cooking should be about relationships, quality, and responsibility.

Living and cooking in the Bay Area, we're surrounded by some of the most incredible agricultural resources in the country. We have farmers, fishermen, and producers doing extraordinary work.

As chefs, we have a responsibility to support that ecosystem whenever possible.

But I also believe sustainability needs to be accessible.

Not every restaurant can afford exclusively organic ingredients, and not every community has access to expensive farmers markets.

We shouldn't make people feel guilty for not being able to afford a certain standard of food.

For me, it's about making thoughtful decisions, reducing unnecessary waste, supporting responsible producers, and respecting ingredients.

And let's not forget that many traditional food cultures were practicing seasonal cooking long before it became fashionable.

In the Philippines, you cooked with what the land and water provided.

That's not a trend. That's tradition.

9. If you serve wild foods, have you received training or sought education in wild foods and their allergens and medicinal actions, as well as how to use them for flavor?

My experience working in kitchens that emphasized foraging, seasonality, and ingredient-driven cooking exposed me to a deeper understanding of wild foods and their culinary potential.

Working in Copenhagen, particularly during my time at Noma, changed how I looked at ingredients and the natural environment.

It taught me to think beyond conventional produce and understand how wild plants, herbs, and other ingredients can contribute acidity, bitterness, aroma, and complexity to a dish.

But I also believe there's a tremendous responsibility that comes with using wild ingredients.

Proper identification, food safety, potential allergens, toxicity, and responsible harvesting practices are essential. Culinary experience alone doesn't replace specialized knowledge, especially when it comes to medicinal properties or unfamiliar plants.

I believe in continuing to learn from experienced foragers, botanists, Indigenous knowledge holders, and other specialists who understand these ingredients beyond their culinary applications.

For me, wild food isn't about putting something unusual on a plate just to impress somebody.

It's about understanding the environment, respecting the ingredient, and knowing when and how to use it safely.

Good cooking starts with curiosity. Responsible cooking starts with knowledge.

David Knapman

Head chef and co-owner, Glebe House, East Devon.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

The food ecosystems that seems to thrive most are those that value food as a shared part of culture rather than as a commodity.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

Maybe not in my personal situation, but beyond that there often is. Again I would say this ultimately comes down to food's value being reduced to only ££.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

On a practical level, better regulation around naming/defining products. Better education around food & cooking. Improved access for everyone to real food/cooking.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

On a personal level, nothing and no. Industry-wide I think the hospitality sector is too geared towards favouring large companies & economies of scale.

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

Very important. Working within a team. Working with local suppliers, connecting with community events. Working in a wider community of chefs/food professionals with shared interests.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

Ultimately it's about the enjoyment of food/hospitality.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

No.

8. Do you think it is important to serve local, seasonal or organic food? If so, why?

Yes for healthier, happier people/planet & societies

9. If you serve wild foods have you received training or sought education in wild foods and their allergens and medicinal actions, as well as how to use them for flavour?

Yes have done a lot of research using various resources/going on field trips with experts etc. Although I have no formal qualifications in this area (the only formal qualification I have related to cooking is Heath/Food safety related).

Will Greig

Co-founder, Pipers Farm.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

I think, fundamentally, we need to rebuild the connections between the people who produce our food and the people who consume it.

Throughout my working life I've met countless farmers who want to produce food in a particular way, with real consideration for animal welfare, the environment, the quality of what they're producing and the long-term sustainability of their farms. Equally, there are consumers who genuinely want to buy that food. Yet remarkably often, the two struggle to find each other.

The more conscious people are when it comes to choosing the food they consume, the better the outcome is for their health and the health of the planet. However, so often industrial producers choose to keep customers at arms length to hide all manner of sins in order to keep their profits healthy. Globally, we have developed a food system that's extraordinarily efficient at producing and distributing enormous quantities of relatively standardised products, but often remarkably poor at recognising and rewarding individuality, provenance and the values behind how food is produced.

I don't think the answer is necessarily to expect every farmer to become a retailer, or every consumer to spend their weekends travelling between farm shops. We need to find better, more accessible and commercially sustainable ways of connecting the two.

And I think that principle of connection needs to extend right through the food system, from farmers and processors to retailers, communities, policymakers and public institutions.

Ultimately, the future of food needs a system in which producing good food responsibly is commercially viable, and buying and enjoying that food is something accessible to everyone.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

Absolutely, over several generations, we've developed what I would describe as a remarkably disconnected food culture. We've been brought up with the expectation that cheap food would be endlessly available, and that increasingly convenient, pre-prepared products would remove much of the need to understand ingredients, cooking, seasonality or indeed where our food came from.

In many parts of continental Europe, the relationship between farming, food markets, independent retailers and domestic cooking has remained much more embedded in everyday culture. In Britain, we've gradually lost a lot of those connections.

The growth of supermarkets has undoubtedly brought enormous benefits in terms of convenience, consistency and accessibility. But one consequence of their dominance has been the erosion of the smaller independent food retailers that once formed such an important link between producers and their local communities.

Some of the assumptions underpinning our food culture are beginning to unravel. The health and environmental consequences associated with aspects of highly processed diets and high-input food production are becoming increasingly apparent. At the same time, rising energy, labour and agricultural input costs have challenged the economics of a system built around the expectation of perpetually cheap food.

One of the most encouraging things we've witnessed in our own business is a marked shift towards a younger customer demographic. Increasingly, these are people who want to buy genuinely good ingredients and create the value themselves at home, through cooking. I find that enormously encouraging. Perhaps we're beginning to rediscover that food isn't simply something to consume, but something to understand, prepare and enjoy.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

I think we need to make good food more accessible, both physically and culturally.

There's sometimes a tendency within the food world to assume that if we educate consumers sufficiently, they'll change their buying habits. Education is important, but we also have to recognise the realities of modern life. People are busy. They have families, jobs, financial pressures and countless demands on their time. We cannot expect everybody to spend their weekends travelling between individual farms, farmers' markets and specialist producers.

Equally, we cannot expect every farmer who produces exceptional food to become an expert in marketing, retailing, logistics and customer service simply to reach the people who value what they do.

What we've lost in many places is the everyday infrastructure that connected food producers with the communities around them. Independent butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, markets and other food businesses weren't simply places to buy food. They were places where knowledge, relationships and trust developed.

I think we need to find ways of rebuilding those connections in a form that works for modern life, whether through independent retailers, collaborative networks, local markets, direct selling or entirely new models.

But I also think we need to look beyond individual consumers and consider the wider institutions that shape how food is bought and distributed. Schools, hospitals and other public organisations have enormous purchasing power, and could play a much greater role in supporting the food-producing communities around them.

Alongside that, we need to restore confidence in cooking. Good ingredients don't necessarily require complicated preparation, and understanding how to make something delicious from relatively simple ingredients can be both rewarding and economical.

Ultimately, reconnecting people with food shouldn't feel like an additional burden. It should become a natural, enjoyable part of everyday life.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

I think the greatest need is for a food system that makes doing the right thing economically sustainable.

There's an enormous amount of passion, knowledge and idealism within farming and independent food production. But those qualities alone aren't enough to sustain livelihoods.

Farmers are being asked to deliver more in terms of environmental outcomes, animal welfare and sustainability, while simultaneously facing enormous financial pressures. Consumers, meanwhile, are dealing with their own economic challenges and understandably need food to remain affordable.

One area where I think we could make enormous progress is in how public funding is directed towards food and farming.

There's some fantastic support available for farmers, abattoirs, community food enterprises and other parts of the supply chain. But so often that funding is allocated in isolation, without sufficient consideration of how the different parts of the system connect.

We might support a farmer to produce food more sustainably, or an abattoir to modernise its facilities, or a community enterprise to improve access to food. All worthwhile objectives individually, but there's often remarkably little emphasis on ensuring that the funding creates meaningful connections between them.

For example, I struggle to see the full long-term value of publicly funding a local food market if the businesses operating within it are predominantly sourcing their produce from international commodity markets. That's not a criticism of imported food, which has an important role to play, but surely we should be looking at how that investment can also support farmers and producers in the surrounding region.

The other area I find particularly frustrating is the disconnect between public institutions and the food-producing communities around them.

Schools, hospitals, local authorities and other publicly funded organisations collectively have enormous purchasing power. Yet I've seen numerous examples of schools and hospitals buying meat from a local wholesaler, who in turn is sourcing it from international commodity markets.

It seems extraordinary that we can spend public money supporting local farming and food production, while other parts of the public sector are simultaneously spending substantial sums purchasing food without considering whether those same farmers could supply it.

Imagine if we were better at joining those two things together.

Public investment could support farmers, regional processing and distribution infrastructure, while the purchasing power of local institutions could help create dependable demand for the resulting produce.

Of course, public institutions have budgets, nutritional requirements and procurement obligations to meet. But surely those are challenges worth addressing.

I don't think it's necessarily about spending more public money. It's about making the money we're already spending work harder, and ensuring that the benefits flow through the wider food economy.

Ultimately, I'd like to see a food system where producing good food responsibly is a genuinely attractive and viable way to make a living.

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

Community is absolutely fundamental, and I think it's something we've perhaps undervalued as food production has become increasingly industrialised and disconnected.

Farming can be an incredibly isolated occupation. Individual farmers are often facing remarkably similar challenges, whether that's profitability, environmental pressures, succession, changing markets or simply the emotional demands of running a farming business.

Yet so much of the conversation around improving agriculture focuses on what individual farmers should be doing differently, rather than how we create the conditions that allow them to succeed collectively.

I think there's enormous value in bringing people together to share knowledge, resources and experiences, and to recognise that many of the challenges they're facing are shared.

We're currently involved in developing a farmer-led community initiative designed to do precisely that, bringing livestock farmers together to improve environmental outcomes, strengthen their businesses and support one another.

But community extends beyond farming itself. It's the relationships between farmers, chefs, independent retailers, producers and consumers that create a genuinely vibrant food culture.

Food has an extraordinary ability to bring people together, and I think rebuilding those communities is one of the most important things we can do for its future.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

For me, it's always been the extraordinary people involved in producing food, and the food itself.

I've been fortunate to spend much of my life around farming, and I still find it fascinating how much knowledge, skill, commitment and sheer hard work goes into producing something that most people encounter simply as an item on a supermarket shelf.

There are farmers who have spent generations understanding their land and livestock, and producers who have dedicated their lives to perfecting a particular product. I think there's something incredibly special about that.

Equally, I love seeing what happens when somebody buys a genuinely wonderful ingredient, takes it home and creates something delicious for their family or friends.

There's a real pleasure in food that goes far beyond nutrition or sustenance. It brings people together, creates memories and connects us with the places and communities around us.

And increasingly, I'm inspired by what feels like a renewed interest in food among younger generations.

We're seeing people who want to understand ingredients, learn to cook, explore different flavours and take a greater interest in where their food comes from.

After decades in which convenience seemed to be the overwhelming direction of travel, I think that's an enormously positive development.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

Absolutely. I think anyone who's spent a significant amount of time working in farming or building an independent food business will recognise those feelings.

There's a real challenge when you care deeply about the principles behind what you're doing. You're not simply trying to make a living. You're trying to support other people, maintain standards, build relationships and hopefully make a positive contribution to the world around you. But all of those ambitions sit alongside the relentless financial and practical realities of running a business.

There are times when the responsibility can feel enormous, particularly when other people's livelihoods depend on the decisions you're making.

And I think there's sometimes an expectation that because you're doing something you're passionate about, the work itself should somehow be enough to sustain you. In reality, passion can make it harder to switch off, because the work becomes so closely connected to your identity.

What helps enormously is having people around you who understand those pressures. Not necessarily people who can solve every problem, but people you can speak openly with, share experiences with and occasionally be reminded by that you're not the only person facing these challenges.

I think we could do much more to create those support networks within farming and independent food production.

We talk a great deal about building resilient food systems, but ultimately those systems depend on resilient people. And we need to look after them too

Chris Onions

Chef and event company owner.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

Classless Empathy

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

Joy and Art and Flavour

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

Hands in the soil for some, starvation on their doorsteps and no hope of help for others, meaningful opportunities on there land for most.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work?

Team, learning, ingredients that are pure, customers. The work is always there in this industry if you're willing to work, clean the pots and be dirty and sore. If you want to be an artist then you need to ask for other things.

5. How important is community to your work?

It's everything always and forever.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

You do!

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

Yeah for sure, still am a bit. Friends, family and some time to myself.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

Local - not always but exciting to find the freshness and stories. Seasonal - yes but everything is alive. Is a cardamom pod better in February or September and how many people can eat a local strawberry in June. Organic - no one chose to eat food that was sprayed with chemicals or from and animals that needed to suffer or workers that wouldn't be cared for so maybe better to ask Chemical, Slaved and Harmful food on that one.

9. If you serve wild foods, what training have you had?

No, just from the elders and grandparents. You don't need to do a course to tell the stories of the stars.

Dom Moldenhauer

Head Chef, River Cottage, Lyme Regis.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

I think the future of food is about getting the right food to the right people, in the right quantities, without wasting things or polluting the world. A huge part of that is education. People need to understand how to shop properly, how to store food, how to cook, and how to make the most of ingredients instead of throwing them away. It's not just about telling people what's sustainable or what they should eat, but also giving them the confidence to turn good ingredients into something genuinely delicious. And at the other end, supermarkets have to do their part too, by offering better options, cutting unnecessary plastic and packaging, and cleaning up their supply chains.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

The missing link right now is that people are so busy they've lost touch with food. Cooking isn't part of everyday life for a lot of people anymore. We've accepted cheap convenience foods, and along the way we've lost some of that care and connection. I think that's what needs to change.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

I think this is a really difficult question because food isn't equal. Where I live in Lyme Regis and through my work as a chef, I'm incredibly lucky. I know farmers, fishermen and producers. I can see where ingredients come from, but I'm very aware that's a privilege. If you're on a tight budget with two kids and you want to make a bacon sandwich, you're going to buy the bacon and bread you can afford. You can't judge someone for not buying organic, traceable bacon and a beautiful loaf of sourdough if those things aren't financially realistic. Right now, we've created a food system where the less sustainable option is often the cheapest and easiest. So reconnection can't just be about telling people to care more or shop better. We have to make those choices genuinely possible. That means creating supply chains where good, responsibly produced food is affordable and accessible to everyone, because if the right choice is always the expensive choice, we can't blame people for choosing the alternative. For me, that's the missing link: we need to make the better choice the easier choice, not the privileged choice.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

To keep doing this work, I need fair prices and enough margin to pay for skill and sustainability, not just the cheapest option. That means enough trained people and enough budget to actually invest in training, so people can manage waste, source well, and grow for the future. Without that, it's not sustainable for the business or the team.

5. How important is community to your work, and where or how do you find it?

Community is one of the most important parts of my work, and I'm lucky to have found it naturally through doing my job. I know who dives for my scallops, who catches my sea bass, who produces my eggs and who grows my vegetables, and I can speak to them directly and cook around that. That's one of the main reasons I still love doing this. I thrive on those relationships - it's not just about cooking a plate of food, it's about being part of a living network of people who grow, catch, produce, cook and eat together. But I also have to recognise that it's an enormous privilege. I've found myself in a place and a workplace that nurtures that naturally, and most people don't have that direct relationship with the people producing their food.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

You'd probably have to ask my psychiatrist. But truly, food is one of the most important parts of anyone's life. It's culture, family, memory, comfort, celebration - it connects everybody. That's what keeps me interested in it. Food is incredibly basic in one sense: we all have to eat. But it carries so much meaning. I love that my job challenges me every day to take something as fundamental as an ingredient and turn it into something that can make somebody happy, bring people together, or create a memory. That's what inspires me: working with something so simple and essential, but knowing it can still be creative, emotional and important.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

Many times. Cheffing is demanding, and trying to make it work now can feel almost impossible. You carry the food, the team, the training, looking after people, controlling costs and still making it all add up. For a long time, chefs were simply expected to work until the job was done, whether they were being paid for those hours or not, and that became normal. If you don't love it, it's incredibly hard to sustain. What we're seeing now is that people quite rightly want fair pay for fair hours and a life outside the kitchen. That's not destroying food; it's exposing how much the industry relied on people giving more than they were paid for. That has to change. What would have helped me is better staffing, realistic budgets, support for training, and a culture where working yourself into the ground isn't seen as proof that you care.

8. Do you think it is important to serve local, seasonal or organic food? If so, why?

I think it's important, yes, but I don't think local, seasonal and organic are simple badges of good food. For me, seasonality is probably the most important because people have got used to everything all year round and we've lost touch with what belongs to a time and place. Local matters too, but it's not automatically better. It depends where you live, what can be grown there and how the supply chain works. Something from another country isn't necessarily bad; trade can support farmers and communities elsewhere too. Organic is similar. I respect it, but certification alone doesn't tell you whether someone is farming responsibly. There are amazing growers doing thoughtful, regenerative work without the label. For me, it comes back to knowing the supply chain: how it's grown, who produced it, how it got to you, how it's packaged, who benefited and what impact it had. And once again, I have to acknowledge that's a privilege. Not everyone has access to beautiful local produce or can always afford the most sustainable option. So yes, local and seasonal matter enormously, and organic can matter too, but the bigger goal is a food system that's transparent, responsible and accessible, not one that only relies on labels.

9. If you serve wild foods, have you received training or sought education in wild foods and their allergens and medicinal actions, as well as how to use them for flavour?

Yes. Over more than twenty years as a chef, I've learned from people with deep knowledge of foraging, identification, preparation and how plants can affect the body. I've been taught to think: just because something is edible, doesn't mean it needs to be eaten. A wild ingredient has to bring something - flavour, texture, acidity, bitterness or something aromatic - not just novelty. And the education and safety side is huge: possible lookalikes, which parts are usable, potential allergens, and how to prepare them. But we've lost a lot of knowledge about foods that once were normal. Nettles, rosehips, chickweed - things that grow everywhere. Growing up in Germany, rosehip tea or jam was completely familiar. There's something special about stepping outside, seeing what's actually growing, and bringing a bit of that wild larder into the kitchen. For me, it's about flavour, but also about reconnecting people with ingredients we've forgotten, and I'd love to see some of those foods become normal again rather than treated as unusual.

Sammie Longhorn

Forager and educator

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

I have rose-tinted spectacles about the past, so I always feel we should return to the old ways, though I know that isn't realistic on its own. In an ideal world there would be smaller permaculture and organic farms, but I'm not sure they could feed the population we have now. I do think that if we can shift what consumers expect, we get a long way. We need much more seasonal, fresh and local food, and much less imported from abroad. That means accepting that our choices are limited by the season. Exotic fruit should be an occasional treat, and we shouldn't demand strawberries all year round. We should eat less meat and do much more nose to tail cooking. As a forager, I'd also like to see much more wild food, because it's seasonal and nutritionally dense. For me, wild food has been a gateway for people who've been sleepwalking a bit through their buying habits. Once you snap them out of buying everything in plastic boxes in the supermarket, whatever the time of year, they start to think differently. Connecting with wild food or volunteering on a permaculture farm is a brilliant way to do that.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

My grandparents looked at what was available and then decided what to cook. These days we start with what we fancy and then go and buy what we need to make it. We need to reverse engineer our approach to cooking again: what do I have, and what can I cook from it? Maybe that sounds trite, and I know many of my observations come with rose-tinted spectacles, but I do feel we should return to the old ways.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

Go on foraging walks. Visit small, sustainable permaculture farms and go to events such as apple days and the tomato party we ran. Get people onto the land and let them see where their food comes from. Getting children onto the land is sometimes just fun, and sometimes it can shift the way they see everything.

5. How important is community to your work?

It's absolutely vital. When I run a foraging or wild remedies workshop, the sense of connection people get can be as healing as the preparations we make. It can be profoundly moving to have people together with that ancient intention of harvesting and preparing food. It connects people in a meaningful way. The same goes for volunteering and taking part in events at the farm, where people tell us it brings more of a sense of meaning to their lives, far beyond learning about nutrient-dense seasonal food. It has a primal, ancestral feeling to it.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

That feeling. A sense of purpose in reawakening people to a more authentic life, with an amazing source of food and community. Healing ourselves as we heal the land, as we create community. It feels like my purpose in life.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work?

No, because I find so much passion in the work. The only time I felt really alone was during the Wildbiome Project. I felt that our ancestors would have dropped everything on the first days the cherries were ripe, or when the beech nuts were perfect, and gone out to harvest as a community. Meanwhile I'd see people off to work and wish we all lived in a community that harvested and processed together. Processing wild food was the biggest challenge of the whole project, because it's long and laborious. Around a campfire, in a community, it's a completely different kettle of fish from doing it on your own in front of the TV.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal and organic food?

Yes, absolutely vital, for ourselves and for the land. At the risk of sounding twee, I think it's important to reclaim techniques that have come to be seen as the preserve of pleasant, leisured middle classes, like fruit preservation and fermentation. They should be completely democratised. They've come to seem a bit fancy, or for posh people only, but there's huge food insecurity on the horizon and the wastefulness we've seen can't go on. Fruit preservation, fermentation and even growing your own bread should feel like they belong to all of us.

9. Training in wild food?

I've done some unaccredited courses, but most of it is self-taught. I've had support from members of the Association of Foragers. It sometimes feels a bit like the wild west. Being able to serve wild food with so little regulation is amazing in some ways, but in other ways I know I'd never do anything dangerous. On the advice of another forager [name withheld], from listening to podcasts he's done, I've stopped serving hogweed. He has heard enough reports of people with no previous carrot-family allergy suddenly reacting to it, so he's stopped, and I respect him enough to do the same.

Vincent Lebon

Co-owner, Ferme L'Apogée, a winery and summer restaurant in the Dordogne.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

Rapid adaptation of agricultural practices, with less environmental impact. Adaptation of the distribution and transport model. Rethinking the Western idea of abundance.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

Yes, there are missing links. We've been misled by distribution and a lack of food education. We have the ability to get any product at any time of year, and that's wrong. We should learn to cook with what's available seasonally and around us. So yes, again, simplicity and community, in a way that respects the environment.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

It's a vast question, because I think people have lost connection with their environment. We live in cities and we're completely disconnected from where food is grown. So it comes down to investing in food education, where food comes from, really showing people where it's grown and what can be grown around them. At school, children could have meals based on what's available. They could visit farms, they could visit slaughterhouses, so they can decide whether they want to eat all of that. We are very disconnected from our food, and again, for me, that's distribution. What will help is insisting on education and encouraging cooking at home more.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work? Is there anything you would benefit from?

From the perspective of a gardener: raising public awareness of agricultural practices. The way we farm now has to change if we want to preserve habitat. The farmers are not the problem. They've been programmed, worked into a system that is detrimental, and it's super complex for them to imagine changing their working habits. Those farmers need support. But we also need consumers to buy better quality ingredients and be more aware. And where does that awareness come from? Probably by voting for someone who's going to change things a bit more.

From the perspective of gardening, I think we need a lot of resilience these days: resilience to climate change and to rising costs. And for the second part, is there anything I'd benefit from? It's a tricky one. Maybe people understanding the effort and intention that goes into growing food. Again, education, I guess. We're very lucky in France. There's a fair bit of help for small-scale organic gardeners, so we do have that benefit. But on a personal level, it's about being resilient to change and adapting.

5. How important is community to your work, and how and where do you find it?

The way we open ourselves up to the public, with the summer restaurant and an open garden and farm that people can walk around and experience, makes what we do a bit more than just a summer restaurant. People say, "Oh, this is a lovely experience." We get lots of WWOOFers coming, and chefs from different parts of the world. That's where we find our community: in being very open and transparent about what we're doing, cooking food directly from the garden, foraging, and making the most of the beautiful produce in the Dordogne. We also find community on a very local level, with friends who lend a hand when we do permablitzes. We do that on a rotation, where people come and help at our farm and then we go and help at theirs. There's a very good, strong community of organic growers here in the Dordogne, and we're all in the same boat, which is great.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

The experience of learning something new, and changing my life, a change of lifestyle from living in a city. It comes back to the missing link: I've felt the gaps between what we eat and how we cook, and I've found a way to fill them through this new adventure.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

This links back to the model. If we don't change the model, we won't be able to preserve the environment. We can only showcase products from sustainable farming.

In reply to Millie on the price of organic food: I'm always careful of the argument that organic food is more expensive so not everyone can eat it, because that's a model problem. If people were more inclined to see that, in order to preserve our environment, we need to eat organic... let me put it a different way. Not eating organic has a great cost that we all pay. It's the price of industrial farming: pesticides, fertiliser, cloned seeds, genetically modified products. That has a huge cost to the environment, and we all pay it, because there's no planet B. In the end we all pay, having thought it was cheaper to do it differently. It's not. It's more detrimental to the planet and to our habitat. So it is more expensive not to eat organic food. We will all pay the price.

9. If you serve wild foods, what training have you had?

I don't personally serve wild food. I don't forage, because my knowledge is too limited, so I don't do it. I usually go through producers' channels.

Millie Domini

Co-owner, Ferme L'Apogée, a winery and summer restaurant in the Dordogne. Grew up in Australia.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

The idea of food sovereignty. The future of food is healthy for the community, locally produced and sustainable, with producers leading the charge. A bottom-up rather than top-down approach. Agroecological, with less waste, and putting the environment first.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

What inspires me about the work I do, gardening, cooking and winemaking, is that we produce things. It's productive in a way that feels healthy and good for ourselves, and we do it the best way we can for the environment. It feels honest, rewarding, and really beautiful, working outdoors most of the time. And cooking and serving food to people is also incredibly rewarding, seeing people well fed and enjoying being hosted by me.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

I believe local comes first, because seasonality usually and naturally follows if something is locally produced. Organic is definitely part of our values. We eat organic, we shop organic, and the restaurant serves mostly organic food when we can source it locally. But I also understand that the price that comes with organic food is a complicated one for many people. So I'd say start with local, and local organic when you can. Seasonal is wrapped up in both of those. But eating seasonally is also very exciting, and something we should be doing more.

9. If you serve wild foods, what training have you had?

Personally, I really love to forage. It's definitely a journey. I grew up in Australia and moved to the UK, learning about gardening and farming as I went, so I know more about UK foraging and European or local French foraging. We feature many foraged ingredients on the restaurant menu, like elderflower, wild herbs and wildflowers. I gained most of this knowledge from a weekend Forest School while I was working in York, learning from a practitioner there in foraging wild foods. Otherwise it's learning from books and from other local people, herbalists and people at the market, particularly when it comes to mushrooms. I don't know so much about the medicinal side. I'm more inclined towards the culinary side. I'm very open to the power of wild plants as medicine, but I wouldn't feel confident imparting that knowledge or suggestion. I'm more inclined to use foraged foods as a culinary base.

Question 7, answers from Ferme L'Apogée

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work? Is there anything that could have helped?

(a) I don't always feel it, but I have felt burnt out. Not alone, but burnt out.

(b) Because we work so seasonally, I'm able to push through the intensity of summer and look forward to the slowing down of autumn and winter, then kicking off again in the spring. That's how I frame the work, and how I try not to feel burnt out: by really living with the seasons. Is there anything that could have helped? Not necessarily burnout, but really trying to adapt and be okay with things like heat waves, working with the heat, changing the rhythms of how we work. Last summer in particular was quite hard on everyone: the people who work in the garden, the people who work in the kitchen, even our guests. So it's not necessarily burnout, but trying to adapt, I guess, to climate change.

Stewart Dodd

Chief executive, River Cottage.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

To move away from over processed foods and revert back to food from nature.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

...the industrialisation of agriculture and large scale processing has moved us far away from the source of our food.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

[Educating] our children to understand where food comes from and teaching them how to cook at a very young age.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work?

...in the UK the government could help by reducing the VAT levels to align with the rest of Europe.

5. How important is community to your work?

It's crucial, we work with many local producers who[se] livelihoods depend on us.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

Optimism for a better future, I'm still hopeful.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work?

Everyday 😂 being the CEO is a lonely world.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

Our entire business is built around SLOW, Seasonal, Local, Organic & Wild...

9. Training in wild food?

We use professional foragers to ensure our team understand the primary issues around wild food.

Chiara Tomasoni

Chef.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

Less food miles. More stories!

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

...better education on how to cook with the environment in mind.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

I think it all starts in schools.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work?

Less VAT. More government support for tiny farms/producers.

5. How important is community to your work?

Absolutely paramount. Always chat to people you are buying from/selling to.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

I want to have the same approach to food that [my] great-grandpa had.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work?

...I have been lucky to be able to leave situations where I felt unsupported and alone.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

Good food needs to tell a story of time, places, seasons, and people.

9. Training in wild food?

Have asked lots of questions to experts and I do take quite a careful approach...

Charlotte Vincent

Chef.

1. What do you think the future of food needs most?

I think the future of food needs more respect - for our ingredients, our producers, our environment and our people. We spend so much time talking about innovation and the next big thing that sometimes we forget the fundamentals.

We need to make food more sustainable, more accessible and more honest. We also need to look after the people working in hospitality. You cannot build a sustainable food culture on exhausted chefs, struggling farmers and underpaid producers. The future of food has to include the future of the people behind it.

2. Is there a missing link in how we grow, cook and eat?

I think we've lost some of the connection between the land, the kitchen and the table. As chefs, we can become so focused on the finished dish that we forget the journey an ingredient has taken to get there.

We need stronger relationships between growers, farmers, producers and chefs. Young cooks should understand seasonality, provenance and the value of an ingredient, not just how to prepare it. Cooking isn't simply about technique; it's about understanding what you're working with and respecting it.

3. What would help people reconnect with where their food comes from?

Education and experience. Get children into gardens, onto farms and into kitchens. Let them see what grows in their own environment, understand the seasons and learn how much work goes into producing food.

As chefs, we have a responsibility to share that knowledge rather than keep it behind the kitchen door. We should be working more closely with schools, communities and local producers.

We also need to make good food accessible. Eating seasonally and cooking from scratch shouldn't be a luxury. Some of the best food in the world comes from humble ingredients treated with care.

4. What do you need to keep doing your work?

I need good people, good producers and the freedom to cook with purpose. I love mentoring young chefs and helping them find their confidence, develop their skills and understand what they're capable of. That is one of the most rewarding parts of my work.

I'd love to see more investment in training, better support for independent restaurants and more realistic working cultures. We need to move away from the idea that being a great chef means sacrificing your health, your family and your life outside the kitchen.

I'd also love to see greater collaboration across the industry, sharing knowledge and opening doors for the next generation rather than making them fight to get through them.

5. How important is community to your work?

Community is everything. Food has always been about bringing people together, whether that's a family around a table, a team in a kitchen or a group of local producers working together.

I find community through the people I work with, the chefs who share their knowledge, the producers who care passionately about what they do and the people who support independent food businesses.

I've always believed that being a chef is about more than putting food on a plate. It's about creating experiences, building relationships and making people feel welcome. We achieve far more when we support one another than when we compete in isolation.

6. What inspires you to do the work that you do?

People, produce and the opportunity to keep learning. I'm inspired by the seasons, by discovering an ingredient at its best, by producers who take real pride in their work and by the potential of a young chef who just needs someone to believe in them.

Having worked in high-level kitchens, including Michelin-starred environments, I've learnt that excellence isn't just about technical ability. It's about curiosity, discipline, resilience and the willingness to keep improving.

Ultimately, I want to create food that means something, develop people who go on to achieve great things and leave kitchens in a better place than I found them.

7. Have you ever felt burned out or alone in your work?

Absolutely. Hospitality can be an incredibly rewarding industry, but it can also be isolating. The pressure to perform, long hours and the expectation to keep going regardless of what's happening in your personal life can take a real toll.

I've learnt through difficult personal experiences that your health has to come first. We can be passionate about our careers and still need rest, support and time to recover. Those things aren't weaknesses.

What would help is a culture where chefs can speak honestly about struggling without worrying that they'll be seen as less capable. Better leadership, healthier working environments, proper time off and genuine support would make an enormous difference.

We talk about resilience a lot in kitchens, but resilience shouldn't mean silently putting up with everything. We need to look after our people as well as our food.

8. Is it important to serve local, seasonal or organic food?

I believe in cooking seasonally and sourcing locally wherever possible. Seasonality gives food its identity. It connects our menus to the landscape, the climate and the time of year, and it encourages us to cook with what's genuinely at its best.

Working with local producers also builds relationships, supports the regional economy and allows chefs to understand the quality and provenance of their ingredients.

Organic farming can offer important environmental benefits, depending on the practices involved, but I don't believe one label automatically makes an ingredient better. We need to look at the whole picture: how food is grown, how the land is managed, how far it travels, how animals are treated and how much waste we create.

For me, the goal is to buy thoughtfully, cook intelligently and waste as little as possible. Let the seasons influence the menu, rather than forcing the menu to ignore the seasons.

9. Training in wild food?

I believe foraging and wild ingredients can bring incredible depth, character and a real sense of place to a menu. But they also come with responsibility.

Chefs need to understand correct identification, potential toxicity, allergens, safe handling and the risks associated with particular species. We should never assume that something is safe simply because it's natural or because someone else has used it before.

Where wild ingredients are concerned, I'd advocate for proper training and learning from knowledgeable, qualified specialists. We must also understand the difference between culinary use and medicinal claims, and never assume that an ingredient is safe to consume in medicinal quantities.

Wild food should be about celebrating nature and flavour, but safety, knowledge and respect for the environment must always come first.