Food and Farming Highlights at Bioneers 2026
Left: Leah Penniman, farmer and author of Farming While Black. Right: Raj Patel, sustainable systems expert and food justice advocate. Photos courtesy of Bioneers.
In a world plagued by environmental and social challenges, the 37th annual Bioneers conference offers both practical and visionary solutions. The conference comes to Berkeley on March 26–28 with a slate of social and scientific innovators joined this year by several powerful voices in the food and farming sector. Since Bioneers moved its annual conference to Berkeley in 2023, thousands of attendees have gathered on the UC Berkeley campus and in venues across downtown Berkeley for three days of riveting talks, movement building, and connections.
Today, as we once again face the aggression of authoritarian oligarchy, there is a great deal to learn from how food workers confronted oppression a century ago as socialist and anarchist movements around the world gave birth to innovative solidarity strategies that permitted them to survive a fascist onslaught, care for their communities, and put food on the table in times of disease and war. In a Saturday keynote called “Food Solidarity vs Fascism,” Raj Patel, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable food systems and a tireless advocate for food justice, will share what his research on these movements suggests is possible when the best human impulses go to work building economic systems based on mutual aid.
Rights to food and land are fundamental to human freedom, dignity, and self-determination, but locally and globally, land and food have been leveraged as tools of oppression. On Friday, groundbreaking Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist Leah Penniman, founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, gives a keynote called “Free the People! Free the Land!” She’ll offer living proof that people reunited with their land can thrive and flourish as they form solutions to climate chaos and food apartheid. Penniman shows that even in this era of intense state repression, community self-determination and solidarity can be foundational to building a powerful movement for land and food sovereignty.
To bring these bold ideas together, Patel and Penniman will appear onstage on Saturday for a conversation exploring how, even in this reactionary period, we can build effective movements to regenerate our soils, ecosystems, ancestral cultures, and communities to nourish bodies and souls.
For more on food and farming, attendees can attend a session with Mary Purdy of the Nutrient Density Initiative and Dan Kittredge of the Bionutrient Food Association as they explore how the past 50 years of regenerative farming practices have helped reverse the decline of essential nutrients in food crops. There’s also a panel led by Les Szabo of Dr. Bronner’s that discusses new visions for “green” business and a networking session focused on food-related professions.
In addition to the keynotes, roundtables, and workshops, there are daylong options before and after the conference: On March 25, Bay Area Green Tours brings regenerative solutions to life through an Urban Foodscape and Watershed Tour that includes visits to a vibrant urban farm and a school garden. On March 29 in Sonoma, master permaculture teacher and designer Erik Ohlsen shares perspectives and techniques used to regenerate farms, gardens, and larger landscapes.
Register for the conference and related events at conference.bioneers.org.
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