6.3.4 Regenerate Life

Using the food system as a targeted nodal entry point to start transformation, investors who source their strategies and activities from the Regenerate Life paradigm seek to evolve the capacity of a complete place (often a bioregion or life-shed). With their investments, they hope to convey the essence of the location—the irreducible singularity or uniqueness, similar to a bioregional fingerprint or terroir, which results from its specific socio-cultural-ecological-economic characteristics.

Instead of trying to solve problems, Regenerate Life investors put their attention on creating new potential, such as fresh business models, cutting-edge food and eating innovations, fresh agriculture strategies, and company ecosystems that are firmly woven into the region’s long-term narrative.

At this paradigm level, investments and the entire investing process are directed toward building a community of actors in the food systems that continuously improve the vitality and caliber of local intellectual, financial, and living capital. This will often mean that the socio-cultural-gastronomic system that creates both the innovations and the demand for the food itself will be the main focus of regeneration rather than just the environment where food is cultivated.

This community recognizes a functioning global variety, and it tries to develop reciprocal links with other unique places throughout the world. At the same time, it recognizes that its special spot is nested inside broader ecoregions, climatic zones, and Earth herself.

Investors with the intention of regenerating life are profoundly aware of how the local food chain operates. Fooding is the entire live mosaic of interconnected activities that results in the feeding of all beings in a place, rather than merely food, which is a static and finished thing to be consumed.