Bhutan hosts first ‘conscious food summit’ amid threats to global food systems

Organisers say people must revive spiritual relationship with food amid double threat of climate crisis and conflict

Mending the broken food system under the threat of climate-driven weather extremes will require more than economic fixes and intensive agriculture, according to the organisers of a pioneering summit this week, who say the world must revive its spiritual relationship with food.

Delegates from more than 60 countries and the UN will gather for the next five days in Paro in the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan for the world’s first “conscious food summit”, which will bring together governments and farmers, mindfulness experts and yoga therapists.

Tshering Tobgay, Bhutan’s prime minister, said: “Food lies at the intersection of many of the defining challenges of our time – hunger, poor nutrition, poverty, climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasingly food security is also being disrupted by conflict and geopolitical instability. Our central message is simple: transforming our food systems requires both inner and outer change.”

Conscious eating is at the heart of these talks, which will promote regenerative practices and Indigenous knowledge. “Consciousness can cultivate compassion, empathy, resilience, creativity and a stronger connection with nature,” Tobgay said in an interview with the Guardian. “This does not mean choosing spirituality over science. It means recognising that our values and mindsets influence how science, policy, finance and technology are used.”

The impacts of the climate crisis have been brought home close to Bhutan’s borders with the disaster in its near neighbour Nepal last week where a glacial collapse led to floods and landslides that killed hundreds.

This year and next as the “super El Niño” hits, the World Food Programme has warned that 50 million people could be pushed close to starvation . Food shortages and higher prices for staples are likely around the world. It follows a summer in the northern hemisphere in which harvests have been devastated by drought , intense heat and wildfires.

Jerry Spooner, of Regenerative Vanua, a Pacific NGO, said the threats would push global food systems to their limit. “As we face the growing impacts of climate change, a potential super El Niño, biodiversity loss and increasing global instability, it is becoming clear that our food systems are not resilient enough for the challenges ahead,” he said. “The opportunity in Bhutan is to move beyond discussing how we produce more food and instead focus on how we build food systems that regenerate ecosystems, strengthen communities, celebrate culture and improve our collective resilience.”

Tobgay said people must articulate the values they wanted to see reflected in the way food is produced and consumed, instead of relying on businesses and governments to shape food choices. “Food systems are ultimately shaped by human choices, institutions, incentives, relationships and values,” he said. “So we must address root causes as well as symptoms.”

Farmers and rural people were often at the mercy of markets and global forces. “Too often, policies are developed for these groups rather than with them,” Tobgay said.

The summit will focus not on bombastic political speeches and promises but on fostering inner change, with the help of “spiritual masters” such as mindfulness practitioners. Food had become a commodity on world markets and was treated carelessly as a result, leading to waste and unhealthy eating, and those attitudes must be reversed, Tobgay said.

“Outer change is agriculture, markets, finance, public policy and consumption,” he said. “Consciousness has value only if it influences our decisions and changes how we act. For example, a conscious approach to production would care for both the land and the farmer. It would regenerate soils , not deplete them. It would protect water. It would reduce pollution and deforestation and recognise the dignity and wellbeing of the people who produce the food that sustain us.”

Tobgay begins each day at 5am with a bowl of porridge and a banana, eaten sitting by a small stream that runs near his house. “I listen to the birds that are up and about by that time, I listen to the stream and the water,” he said.

Anyone could try conscious eating, he added. Many cultures have a tradition before meals of reflecting on the food, its provenance and preparation, and giving thanks. Reviving such practices would take almost no time but could, he hopes, be one of the first steps to a revolution in the way we treat the planet and each other.