We depend on a shockingly fragile foundation of our food. In fact, fewer than 200 edible plants now make a major contribution to global food production and just nine account for two-thirds of food production. Focusing on just a few crops, and on just the latest varieties of each crop, limits our ability to respond to challenges and keep our food systems viable and resilient. If we lose crop diversity, we lose our options for diversifying agriculture, and creating new, tastier, more nutritious, more resilient and higher yielding varieties.
The Food Forever Experience is an international event series that gives a glimpse of the future of food. By working with innovative chefs to cook lesser known ingredients, we plant the seed for a more diverse, sustainable, and delicious future.
In its fifth year, the Food Forever Experience travels to New York City, Des Moines and Riyadh to highlight the critical role of crop diversity in addressing challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss. Each event will focus on one aspect on how crop diversity is a solution for food security, showcasing how sustainable agriculture and diverse crops can address some of the challenges we face.
For this tasting series, the Crop Trust is partnering with the Chefs’ Manifesto, a global network of chefs who advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their various platforms. Through this partnership, the Crop Trust can bring topics such as genetic diversity to life on the plate. Chefs sit between farm and fork and understand the importance of diversity of diets not only for people health, but planetary health. The chefs who are part of the Chefs’ Manifesto, are committed to championing crop diversity, and use creativity and skill, to ensure diners learn more of not only the importance of protecting crop diversity, but also the impact this can have on achieving the SDGs.
Previous Experiences
Past installments of the Food Forever Experiences took us to eleven cities in eight countries, amongst them Chicago and the Poconos, USA; Cusco, Peru; London, UK; Stockholm, Sweden and Abu Dhabi, UAE. We partnered with 79 chefs that featured over 160 different crops. This was all achieve with the support of over 30 partners.
