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Welcome to the Nourish California 2.0 Convening
Welcome to the Nourish California 2.0 Convening
Designing the Next Chapter of California’s Food Story
Designing the Next Chapter of California’s Food Story
From October 22–24, 2025, at TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, 26 cross-sector leaders — farmers, educators, health professionals, advocates, storytellers, and policymakers — gathered to co-create the next chapter of the Nourish California Initiative.
The Nourish California 2.0 Strategy Convening built on more than a decade of storytelling, curriculum development, and community engagement. This new chapter focused on strategic alignment and systems design — weaving four interdependent domains into one shared vision for transformation by 2035:
Regenerative Agriculture, Food as Medicine, K–16 Food Literacy, and Policy & Planning.
The convening’s guiding purpose:
To cultivate trust, surface promising practices,
and co-design an adaptive roadmap for
food system transformation in California.
To cultivate trust, surface promising practices,
and co-design an adaptive roadmap for
food system transformation in California.
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Over three days, participants moved through a systems practice arc that mirrored the flow of healthy ecosystems:
Day 1: Ground in Place → Day 2: Sense and Synthesize → Day 3: Map and Mobilize.
Through story circles, small-group sensemaking, and collaborative mapping, participants identified twelve key interventions — concrete projects and programs that connect education, health, agriculture, and governance into one regenerative ecosystem of change.
These twelve interventions now form the backbone of the Nourish California 2.0 Strategic Framework, linking:
Inputs (funding, data, mapping)
Throughputs (programs, networks, campaigns)=
Outputs (metrics, accountability, and long-term impact)
Together, they represent a living ecology of interventions— one that grows, adapts, and learns through the relationships that sustain it.
Regenerative Agriculture Working Group
Food as Medicine Working Group
K-16 Working Group
The Process
The Process
Day 1 — Setting the Table: Context, Connection, and Purpose
Day 1 — Setting the Table: Context, Connection, and Purpose
Key Questions:
What is the larger system we are part of?
Where is our work now, and where might it be heading?
What values and stories connect us?
Participants began by grounding in the history and purpose of Nourish, building trust through personal storytelling, and exploring the shared landscape of California’s food system. The day closed with a collective reflection on values and intentions for the work ahead.
Day 2 — Collective Sensemaking: Vision, Challenges, and Interventions
Day 2 — Collective Sensemaking: Vision, Challenges, and Interventions
Key Questions:
What does a thriving future look and feel like for our domain by 2035?
What values and principles guide that future?
What challenges or opportunities are we sensing?
Where could small shifts create big change?
Four working groups explored these questions across the domains of Regenerative Agriculture, Food as Medicine, K–16 Food Literacy, and Policy & Planning. Each group articulated a 2035 vision, surfaced systemic barriers, and identified 3–4 priority interventions that could enable transformation.
These included initiatives like:
Values-Aligned Procurement and Education & Media Campaigns for regenerative agriculture.
Curriculum for Physicians & Dietitians and Stakeholder Impact Indicators for Food as Medicine.
Food Literacy Action Network (FLAN) and Nourish 2.0 Integrated Curriculum for K–16 Education.
Food System Mapping and Narrative Development and Civic Engagement Campaigns for Policy & Planning.
Day 3 — Mapping Our Work: Building a Connected Strategy
Day 3 — Mapping Our Work: Building a Connected Strategy
Key Questions:
How do these interventions connect as part of a single ecosystem?
Where are the leverage points and dependencies?
How do we measure progress and learn together over time?
Participants arranged their twelve interventions into a shared systems map, connecting inputs (funding and insight) to throughputs (programs and partnerships) and outputs (impact and accountability).
This exercise revealed interdependencies across the ecosystem — how funding feeds mapping, how mapping guides procurement, how education builds capacity, and how shared metrics sustain trust.
By the close of Day 3, the group had co-created a visual architecture of the future: a regenerative system where learning, equity, and accountability flow continuously between sectors.
Nourish 2.0 California Collaboratory - Mapping Our Work.pdfHigh-Level Insights
High-Level Insights
1. Narrative Coherence is the Master Lever.
The most transformative act is aligning storylines — building a shared narrative that bridges agriculture, health, education, and policy.
2. Learning Networks Drive Systems Change.
Training, professional development, and peer networks (like FLAN) are essential infrastructure, not side projects.
3. Procurement is the Pivot Point.
When institutions buy regeneratively, markets, mindsets, and metrics shift in tandem.
4. Health is the Integrator.
Food as Medicine creates the bridge that binds soil health, human health, and community well-being.
5. Accountability Sustains the Cycle.
Shared indicators and rating systems enable feedback, transparency, and reinvestment.
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
The Nourish California 2.0 network will continue into 2026 and beyond as a collaborative action lab — refining, funding, and implementing the twelve identified interventions.
Next steps include:
Developing project charters and timelines for each intervention.
Strengthening the cross-sector coordination and communications infrastructure.
Building the shared narrative, metrics, and funding mechanisms needed to sustain the work long-term.
This convening affirmed that transformation begins not in mandates, but in relationships — in people choosing to align their efforts around shared purpose.
“Transformation of the food system means more than a sequence of projects,
it's a choreography of relationships.”
“Transformation of the food system means more than a sequence of projects,
it's a choreography of relationships.”
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