Shaping Change Through Relationships

When I was first talking to Pangea Organics about the opportunity to work on the blog and get to share the magic that is this brand, I was finishing a book (Feeding Each Other: Shaping Change in Food Systems Through Relationship) with my co-author Nicole Civcita. The book is a guidebook for helping us find security and pleasure in a well–nourished life. And, in my mind, the book and Pangea Organics became totally intertwined. The whole reason I wanted to work with Pangea was because of the brand’s attitude and practice of relationship and the radical commitment to be a positive part of the web of life. And I’d been furiously writing about it for two years, so it felt right.

The connections were everywhere - the same cranberries that we talk about as a bioactive ingredient in the AHA Daily Exfoliator are the cranberries I make into chutney every winter. And, they really are the same - organic, grown by farmers who are stewards of the land, and bought and used with love and care. The seaweed harvest leaves enough of the plants in the water to be sustainable while caring for and stewarding our marine life - which we wrote about in the book but then learning about in real life brought the knowledge to light for me. In other words, the facial products I use and about which I have been writing are a part of the food system I have been thinking about and being an activist for for most of my life.

That took me a few months to really process. Pangea Organics is part of the food system. And, we are already doing all the things the book suggests we need to do to save ourselves and the planet from the ecological and humanitarian crisis we see coming. Because of the guiding principles of the company, Joshua Onysko’s vision and high standards, the quality of the ingredients used in Pangea Organics products are not just food, but the most relational and connected form of the food system.

The longer I thought about it the more clear it became: the goal for the book is to re-cast all the decisions and politics, changes, and goals of the food system we are all a part of to be more relational and connected. Pangea Organics already does that - the community of the folks who grow the ingredients, the sharing of information across this blog, the connections to the land and the care for the animals who share it with us, giving back and paying it forward. It’s all there.

However, I am not the big expert in food systems definitions and descriptions - that is my co-author, Nicole. So I interviewed her - because I knew she would have already thought through this connection - and I was right. You can listen to her answer as to how this company is a part of the food system in this interview.

In the meantime, if you care about the world you inhabit enough to be here reading this blog, chances are you are also someone who will get some hope, comfort, and support from Feeding Each Other: Shaping Change in Food Systems Through Relationship. You will find that the choices you are already making are relational choices. And, you may learn a few things about food, the cultural shift we need to approach food in a way that will bring us a delicious future.

One of the things we believe in very deeply at Pangea Organics is that we are part of the community, the environment, and the relationships of the world in which we live. We believe that the decisions we make about what ingredients go into our products is a sacred one in which we link our community to the land and sea. We feel like we are a connection in a web of life that reaches way beyond what we can imagine - touching people and places and environments far away as well as those with which we live intimately. So to be able to write about Feeding Each Other: Shaping Change in Food Systems Through Relationship in the blog is like a dream - being part of a community of love and finding all the ways we are braided together, connected to each other, and the ways in which in the end, we all care about the same things - it’s the way the world should be. And all of us connected through this blog are a part of a future that brings joy and relationship to everything we do, so thank you for being part of the future with us.

Michelle Auerbach - Activist, writer, educator, and consultant

Nicole Civita - Food systems thinker, educator, integrative lawyer, and consultant