Beyond Policy: What Plants and Communities Can Teach us About Sustainable Changemaking

In this community insight paper, we share conversations that took place over the course of two years that we believe shed light on the informal and less-recognized ways that humans forge trust as they design communication to help each other survive as communities in times of scarcity. We hope that this paper will legitimize the communication pathways and resource exchange that we believe make for a sustainable food system centered around abundance rather than deficit. In doing so, we also hope to start a greater conversation on how communities build trust and communication nimbly and quickly in times of crisis as policymaking often lags behind the needs of the community. As we saw during the COVID-19 food crisis, ad hoc communities fill the gaps that policymakers (such as the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)) can't when infrastructures fail. We take inspiration from the plants around us, farmers, scientists, community members, and the individuals and mutual aid groups that came together during the food crisis to build trust and dialogue as the first (and often most responsive) step towards sustainable food systems.