The Bioneers Conference always integrates Restorative Food Systems as one of our core domains of interest. The impacts of agriculture on our ecosystems, of the food we consume on our health, and of the dramatically unequal access to food on social inequity, are so immensely consequential that without radically reshaping our food systems we will never solve some of the fundamental crises we face: climate unraveling, biodiversity plummeting, hunger still far too prevalent, and epidemic levels of diseases attributable in part to poor diets and environmental toxicity.
We have therefore tried to always highlight leading visionaries and cutting-edge food-related projects each year. We will be featuring keynote talks by renowned visionary thought leaders in this domain, several panel discussions with food luminaries, including one with exemplary “green” companies, a few special events, an urban agriculture tour of the East Bay, and more.
Urban Foodscape Tour: Innovators Nourishing the East Bay
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 | 9:00 am – 5:00 pm PT
Bay Area Green Tours will be offering another of their immensely popular East Bay Foodscape tours as a pre-conference day-long outing. These inspiring and immersive excursions visit some of the most innovative social enterprises and non-profit urban farms stewarding the land; supporting their communities; providing education and job training to help nurture living wage jobs; generating local solutions to the climate crisis, food waste, and healthy food access; and much more.
Note: A separate $145 Special Early Bird Price fee is required for this event
PANEL
How Farming Affects the Nutritional Quality of Food and Human Health
Thursday, March 26 | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm PT
More than two billion people globally suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and several USDA studies show that there have been significant declines in essential nutrients in a number of food crops over the past 50 years, as the juggernaut of industrialized agriculture has swept the globe. Fortunately, emerging research is finding that healthy farm soils increase the nutrient density of plants, which implies that authentic regenerative farming practices, along with their many benefits to farmers and ecosystems, can reverse that degenerative 50-year trend and help us create a genuinely healthy food system. With: Mary Purdy of the Nutrient Density Alliance and Dan Kittredge of the Bionutrient Food Association. Moderated by Arty Mangan, Director of the Bioneers Restorative Food Systems program.
KEYNOTE
Leah Penniman – Free the People! Free the Land!
Friday, March 27 | 9:40 am PT
The right to food and the right to land are fundamental to human freedom, dignity, and self-determination, but locally and globally, land and food have been leveraged as tools of oppression. Fortunately, they can also be portals for liberation. Renowned groundbreaking Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist, Leah Penniman, founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, offers us living proof that when Land is reunited with her people, mutual thriving can flourish in the form of solutions to climate chaos and food apartheid. Even in this era of intense state repression, community self-determination and solidarity can be foundational to building a powerful movement for land and food sovereignty.
PANEL
Regenerative Landscaping
Friday, March 27 | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm PT
Regenerative landscaping is an ecological approach to land management that goes far beyond mere sustainability to restore and improve soil health, enhance biodiversity, and create resilient landscapes that sequester carbon, optimize water flows, and support local wildlife. It makes use of native plants, composting, rainwater harvesting and other methods to heal the land by working with natural processes with a minimum of human intervention. It is also is an creative practice that integrates imagination, local context and physical material to achieve harmonies: of earth and water, plants and sunlight, animals and people. In this session, Erik Ohlsen, renowned certified permaculture designer/practitioner and teacher, author of The Regenerative Landscaper: Design and Build Landscapes That Repair the Environment, will share his insights into how we can reconnect with the nuanced understanding of how natural systems function and the beneficial processes ecosystems provide to humans and begin our own journeys of regeneration. Moderated by Arty Mangan, Director of the Bioneers Restorative Food Systems program.
To dig deeper, attend the Post-Conference Regenerative Landscaping Workshop on Sunday, March 29.
KEYNOTE
Raj Patel – Food Solidarity vs Fascism
Saturday, March 28 | 10:05 am PT
As we today once again face the aggression of authoritarian oligarchy, there is a great deal we can learn from how food workers confronted fascism a century ago. Socialist and anarchist movements around the world gave birth to innovative solidarity strategies that permitted them to survive a fascist onslaught, care for their communities, and put food on the table in times of disease and war. Raj Patel, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable food systems and a tireless advocate for food justice, will share what his research about these inspiring movements tells us about how we too can draw on the best human impulses to build economic systems built on solidarity and mutual aid.
PANEL
Food Justice from the Local to the Global: Raj Patel and Leah Penniman in Conversation
Saturday, March 28 | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm PT
Bioneers is delighted to be able to bring together two groundbreaking figures in the struggle for an equitable and healthy food system, one working on the global architecture of that system, the other a hands-on farmer and educator exemplifying how solidarity can empower dispossessed communities to reclaim their food sovereignty. Raj Patel is one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable food systems and a tireless activist against neocolonial, extractive agriculture; Leah Penniman is the visionary founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black. In this fascinating conversation, they will explore how, even in this reactionary period, we can build effective movements to regenerate our soils, ecosystems, ancestral cultures, and communities, and nourish our bodies and souls. Moderated by Naomi Starkman of Civil Eats.
Post-Conference Regenerative Landscaping Workshop
Sunday, March 29 | 10:30 am to 5:30 pm PT
In this daylong intensive that will include theory, demonstrations, and hands-on activities, master Permaculture teacher and designer Erik Ohlsen, author of The Regenerative Landscaper, will share perspectives and techniques we can use to regenerate not only farms and gardens, but larger landscapes as well. The material covered will include how to observe natural patterns of ecological succession so that we can support a landscape in transition facing the stresses of climate shifts and larger ecosystems’ decline, and much more.
Note: A separate $195 Special Early Bird Price fee is required for this event
