Sheila Darmos

How the food market needs to change to accommodate biodiverse farms in transition

::  consumers  ::  networks  ::  connection  ::

While there is a need to support farmers to transition to regenerative farming practices, there is literally a need for every citizen to understand the relationship between food cultivation and the health of our ecosystem.

Once this connection is understood, it is the base for consumers to be willing to go a step towards their farmer. In reality we need to reconnect, in order to make this work. Consumers need to be more agile in the way they demand food on the market, when and what they demand. It needs to be directly connected to what is grown in their region, or in an ecologically sound and accessible way.

It needs indeed a diverse impact network to accomplish this shift of our agri-food system, and this network needs to include all actors that are essential parts of the agri-food system. Like in our farm we know that all elements are connected, so it is in our food market. If we only connect two elements, the system will still not be functional enough.

More Details

After her Bachelor's degree in Sociology in Germany and spending 20 years there, Sheila moved back to Greece to take over the family business, Silver Leaf, which her father had created to support local organic farmers. Being really troubled by conventional business approaches and the lack of ecological awareness in the local rural area in southern Peloponnese, she found her unique way of running her family business, weaving together Permaculture principles, Frederic Laloux approaches and her sociology background.

At the same time, she founded the Southern Lights non profit organisation which goes many steps beyond the scope of the business, supporting farmers in converting to regenerative farming, creating learning opportunities for young and old on topics of regeneration, while bringing together the Greek regenerative movement in the Regen network she co-initiated. At the same time on her own regenerative agroforestry farm, she is creating an invisible school for young and old to reconnect with nature in an abundant food forest.