ERF is a multi-year residency programme at Gagel farm aiming to facilitate the transition to a regenerative (agri)culture by enabling cross-pollination between the learning trajectories for cooks, artists, scientists and farmers.

ERF consists of three trajectories (Eat, Reconnect and Farm) which each offer space for the situated entanglement of different disciplines through the exchange of embodied knowledge, theoretical knowledge, inspiration and collaboration at a regenerative farm.

Our ERF residency is the result of a collaboration between Gagel farm, Valley of the Possible and Bodemzicht foundation.

The very first ERF open call is now live for the Reconnect trajectory of the residency programme. More information on the programme, as well as its application and selection processes and requirements, can be found here.

Later this year, open calls for the Eat and Farm trajectories will follow.

“Eating is an agricultural act”
– Wendell Berry

In the Netherlands, and many other countries from the Global North, we no longer engage in growing our own food, and do not eat with a plant-based focus.  As a society we have become extremely reliant on global food chains and extractive agriculture for our food supply, without realizing that we are dependent on these systems. Furthermore, we tend neither to explore nor investigate what the consequences of our current food systems are doing to the well-being of the ecosystems that facilitate all life on earth, including ourselves.

With regenerative agriculture we can grow amazingly nutritional, tasteful, local and seasonal food. But somehow, we tend to choose convenience over deliciousness and health benefits. We visit supermarkets and restaurants who do our food shopping for us and order their produce and products directly from large, international, corporate wholesalers. Our food has lost connection with our surroundings and we have lost our connection to our food.

Cooks are at the frontline of changing food culture. They are artisan, producer, creative, practical and intent upon nourishing. This residency takes the cook out of the wholesale markets and invites them back into the garden to feed themselves and others with their skills and intuition. We need cooks to inspire a new food culture in which we eat with the seasons so we can dine our landscapes into resilient, healthy ecosystems once again.

“Localization of food is the step-by-step process of reestablishing regional growing and production of nutritious, authentic food. […]
There may be no other single activity that encompasses a greater range of goodness for life, health, water, children and the planet.”
– Paul Hawken, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

This residency is suited to those with a foundational culinary arts education or a strong professional background in the restaurant industry. We invite cooks who are eager to learn and able to embark on engaging research that inspires a transition towards regenerative food systems and cultures. The cooks who takes part in the residency program question the current system and understand the power of food in changing the world.

* More information on the programme, application and selection processes will be shared as soon as possible. Please subscribe to our newsletter and social media to stay up to date. *

“All flourishing is mutual”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer

We live in a time of crises. The climate crisis, social injustice and loss of life are all apparent and accelerating. If you look closely, they are also interconnected. They all point to a crisis in our culture. We – people from the global north – have been cultivating a colonial extractive culture for centuries that is inherently destructive. Our culture is based upon separation – nature from culture, individual from individual, humans from other beings. This cultivates disengagement from each other, the soil and the rest of life. And the more and more people get disengaged, the more abstract things become, and the easier it is to extract and to destroy.

Regeneration could offer us an alternate pathway: one in which we reconnect with place, each other and life. To regenerate is to ask yourself with each act and decision that you make, if it leads to more life. And to even ask that question properly, we need a reciprocal world view. We need to understand that when we take good care of others – plants, animals, microbes and people – we are also taking proper care of ourselves. 

Many indigenous cultures have known for centuries that we live in an interconnected world that we need to care for. In fact, when you look at the vast variety of different world views – they almost all perceive all life forms as sacred and honour the wisdom of the heart and hands as much as the mind.

This begs the question of how we can get back in touch. How do we build a regenerative culture, with its own rules, sacraments, languages, institutions and rituals that facilitate life? How do we become native again? And what would that even look like in 21st century European contexts? 

Find a full overview of the RECONNECT residency program, the process of application and selection, and our jury you’ll find in this document.

“More than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents
a fundamental shift in our culture’s relationship to nature.”
– Charles Eisenstein

Industrial agriculture – characterised by intensive plowing, overgrazing, monocultures, animal suffering, pesticides and artificial fertilizers – is still the norm in Europe. Consequently, we live in a time of extreme loss of life due to the destruction of ecosystems and exhaustion of soils.

Within this conventional system, the farmers have become the revenue model for large corporations and food is mainly distributed on a global scale, rather than feeding local communities. Additionally, the nutritional value of the food produced by conventional agriculture is plummeting, and pesticides and plastics have become part of our daily meals. 

Worldwide, industrial agriculture is causing the loss of 30 football fields worth of fertile, living soils per minute – amounting to 15,5 million football fields per year. Food systems that destroy life cannot feed us. Depleted soils can no longer withstand increasing temperatures, severe drought or rainfall, and thus cannot support life. That is, unless they are regenerated. 

Regenerative agriculture offers a new, hands-on perspective on how humans can co-create landscapes that are abundant in food as well as life.  We need more regenerative farmers to build new food systems which focus on feeding all forms of life, on rebuilding ecosystems and facilitating healthy habitats for all beings that reside in our landscapes.

* More information on the programme, application and selection processes will be shared as soon as possible. Please subscribe to our newsletter and social media to stay up to date. *