Two weeks ago, I was lucky to participate in the Climate Farming Congress in Southern Germany.

The energy was different here, between these 60 people from all around Europe, farmers, and organizations engaged in regenerative agriculture, or better agri-culture.

It felt less a conference and way more a re-connection and inter-connectedness with like-minded people, all on journeys towards regeneration.

I think “connection” was the word used the most during the three days at the Farmers’ Castle.

A woman putting a sticky note to a board

How did we lose connections in our world – while staying ‘connected’ with ever-faster mobile devices and platforms?

Connection to nature, between families, neighbors, and the people who grow our food.

The farmers all around the world who grow the food we live from are anonymous, some far away on different continents.

We created certifications to fill this lost connection, the absence of interaction with the people who grow our food.

We use labels as ‘proof’ of where our food comes from, how it was grown. And, maybe, for the lost trust in the current economy.

“Richness comes from human connection. GDP matters less than hygge.” as William Falk puts it.

If the benefits of being in community and nature are so natural and vital to us, why don’t we change and do more of it?

Maybe because we’ve so lost contact that although we feel the need to search, we don’t realize what we’ve lost or where to find it?

“When was the last time you felt fully connected to nature?” I ask my peers in a session at the congress.

We bathe in a waterfall of stories around grounding moments, imbedded in the sounds of birds and rustling leaves, listening to rain, and breathing the fresh smell of grass. Stories of regeneratively grown food overwhelming all senses with taste, smell, and texture. Special moments at the market, the restaurant, the kitchen table of grandparents with a hot steaming stew.

What if this was all that regeneration is about?

Re-Building real connections – between humans and earth, farmers and the land, between consumers, producers, and communities. Openly sharing why we do the things the way we do them.

In such a world built on connections, would we need labels, certifications, definitions then?

What if reconnection gives us back what we are searching for?