Orientation
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.
This page is a gentle guide for anyone arriving at Food For Us for the first time: practitioners, funders, organizers, educators, neighbors, and those who simply sense that our inherited ways of understanding politics, food, and community no longer match the realities of this moment.
Food For Us exists to help communities navigate ecological and political transition with clarity, capacity, and care. This page helps you find the door that best fits your question or role.
1. If you’re wondering what “post-partisan practice” means…
Start with the Framework Overview, a concise introduction to the approach that underlies all of our offerings.
It explains:
Why left–right narratives are no longer adequate
How communities can collaborate during uncertainty
The role of food, land, and material stakes
Boundaries, discernment, and power analysis
Why this work matters now
2. If you’re a practitioner looking for tools…
Explore our Programs & Offerings, especially if you work in:
Food systems or agriculture
Community resilience or climate adaptation
Public health
Interfaith or civic dialogue
Cooperative or mutual-aid organizing
Rural–urban bridge work
Philanthropy or institutional strategy
You’ll find workshops, consulting, facilitation, and learning experiences designed to help groups work across difference and build regenerative capacity.
3. If you’re interested in the writing behind this work…
Visit the Field Notes page for selected essays, or explore the full body of essays and research on the Post-Partisan Pathways Substack.
Browse Field Notes
Visit the Substack
4. If your community is navigating conflict or uncertainty…
Many groups arrive at Food For Us when they are facing:
Polarization in food, health, or land-use decisions
Ecological pressure (water scarcity, soil loss, climate impacts)
Institutional breakdown or mistrust
A desire to work together despite differing beliefs
We begin with listening, assessment, and material stakes, not ideological debate. If you’d like to explore support or collaboration:
5. If you want to understand how this connects to Nicole’s larger body of work…
Food For Us is one expression of a broader field of practice shaped by ecology, democracy, regenerative economics, and cross-worldview collaboration.
You can learn more on the personal site “Work & Writing” page or through Nicole’s upcoming book, Feeding the Future: Restoring the Planet & Healing Ourselves:
Learn About Nicole
About the Book
6. If you’re simply exploring…
Here are a few great starting points:
Short essays:
Food as Compass: Life-Centered Orientation Through Collapse
Excerpt:
“When institutions falter and familiar narratives dissolve, food offers a compass. Growing, cooking, and eating re-anchor us in cycles of life that have always guided human communities. In disorienting times, this embodied orientation can become a source of steadiness and agency.”
Read the full essay
Beyond Partisan Battles: Food, Health, and the Practice of Living Together
Excerpt:
“Debates about food and health often mirror our political divisions, yet underneath them lie shared longings for safety, dignity, and wellbeing. When we begin from these shared stakes rather than partisan scripts, new forms of collective care become possible.”
Read the full essay
Food as a Mirror of the Metacrisis (and What It Reveals About How We Might Respond)
Excerpt:
“Food reflects the deep patterns of our time—extraction, disconnection, concentration of power—but also the seeds of our repair. By paying attention to how food moves through our lives and communities, we learn something essential about how to navigate the metacrisis with integrity.”
Read the full essay
Conceptual gateways:
Material stakes
Discernment
Kinship & ecological belonging
Pluriversal futures
Community governance & cooperative economics
Questions to hold:
What conditions make collaboration possible here?
How do we protect the vulnerable while expanding the field of relationship?
What does stewardship look like in this place, at this time?
You’re part of the field now.
This is emergent work. No one has the complete roadmap, not us, not institutions, not movements. What we have is practice, relationship, and the willingness to learn together.
Wherever you’re coming from, we’re grateful you’ve arrived.
