How do you feed a global population of 10 billion people by 2050 in a way that’s nourishing, regenerative, and fair?
To say there are no easy answers understates things in a big way. But it’s certainly a worthwhile question to ask. One that demands bringing together the best minds in food systems to consider it.
This is exactly what we did on the 11th of April when we partnered with Food Tank and The Rockefeller Foundation to host the Nairobi premiere of two powerful films. These included Irish Farmers: A Love Story and a cutdown of Food 2050: two moving and nuanced perspectives on sustainable agriculture and what the future of food would look like.
Food Tank President, Danielle Nierenberg in conversation with Betty Kibaara, Director of the Food Initiative, Rockefeller Foundation, and David Osogo, Research Coordinator at APHRC
Abandoning Linear Fixes for Circles of Regeneration
Food 2050 takes a global , system-level approach, shining a spotlight on visionaries from different parts of the world who are tackling the problem with bold, sustainable innovations. The cutdown we screened zeroed in on Nairobi and showcased how City Shamba, a Nairobi-based agricultural initiative, is reimagining how a city swelling with rural arrivals could grow its own food by transforming small urban spaces into organic gardens.
Irish Farmers: A Love Story, on the other hand, starts by telling the farmer’s story before panning out to the bigger picture. This narrative allows us to to see how farming brings communities together, especially around regenerative and organic agriculture, and how one community’s story connects to a much bigger global picture
Both films drive home a point Enviu Agrifood stands squarely behind. A vision of how we can shape the future of farming in a revolutionarily different way, create a better food system and not only halt, but also reverse climate change. An approach that abandons the linear fixes of a broken food system in favour of circles of regeneration, where the land restores, farmers thrive, and food reaches everyone who needs it.
The Power of Film
Reflecting on the screening, David Osogo, Research Coordinator at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), echoed the feelings of everyone in the room by saying ,
“The Food 2050 film provides a unique opportunity to share not only dreams and aspirations to the world on the desired food systems transformation, but also a powerful platform for inclusive dialogue on actualization of the vision.”
This is the power of film. It puts a human face on a shared challenge and makes it impossible to look away. All the more reason, as the film’s director Haven Worley put it, we need farmers as our creative stewards.
Food Tank President Danielle Niereberg in conversation with Enviu Agrifood Domain Director, Eveline Jansen
Such stories allow one farming audience to see themselves in one another, and to be alive to the fact that their soils and climates may be different but the love of land, the challenges, and the hunger for solutions remain the same.
And it’s on this common ground that change will take root. Not in policy documents or boardrooms alone, but in moments like this one, where film opens a conversation that data cannot. Where a farming story from Ireland lands in Nairobi and something shifts. The more we create these spaces, and insist on circles of regeneration over linear fixes, the more that 2050 vision stops feeling like a question and starts feeling like a direction.
