Feeding the Future began as an exploration of what it would take to transform the food system. But as the research deepened, the book evolved into something larger: a guide for understanding why technical fixes and policy reforms, though necessary, are not sufficient to address the crises we now face.

Written at the intersection of food systems, ecological economics, systems change, and regenerative worldviews, the book traces a personal and intellectual journey from traditional legal-political reform toward a more relational, paradigm-shifting approach to change.

It also laid the foundations for Nicole’s current work, Post-Partisan Pathways.

The Core Insight Behind the Book

For years, Nicole worked from the assumption that more evidence, better regulation, and stronger public awareness would catalyze food system transformation. But the deeper she went into the research, and the more she listened to farmers, communities, and practitioners, the clearer it became:

Knowledge alone does not shift systems built on extraction, disconnection, and institutional distrust.

The failures of the food system are not isolated problems at all; they are symptoms of deeper paradigms:

• human separation from nature

• the primacy of yield and efficiency

• technological solutionism

• linear, compartmentalized ways of seeing

• economic models that assume endless growth on a finite planet

These paradigms shape everything—how we farm, legislate, parent, research, organize, and imagine the future.

Feeding the Future invites readers into a generative alternative: regenerative orientation, kinship consciousness, and the practice of Active Hope in uncertain times.

How the Book Connects to Post-Partisan Practice

Although written before Nicole publicly articulated the Post-Partisan Pathways framework, the book contains its seeds.

1. Paradigm Shift as the Real Leverage Point

Drawing on Donella Meadows and ecological systems thinkers, the book argues that the deepest leverage for transforming food systems lies not in policy tweaks but in the worldviews beneath them. Post-partisan practice picks up exactly here, helping communities shift not through persuasion but through shared material work and relationship.

2. Regeneration as a Cultural and Epistemic Invitation

The book situates regeneration as both ecological and relational. Post-partisan practice operationalizes that insight by helping communities steward land, water, food systems, and care infrastructure in ways that transcend ideology.

3. The Limits of Technical Fixes

The narrative documents how technological solutions often obscure deeper systemic failures. Post-partisan practice works with those deeper failures, including economic insecurity, institutional mistrust, and meaning fragmentation, rather than pretending they can be solved by information alone.

4. The Role of Meaning and “Active Hope”

Joanna Macy’s concept of Active Hope—seeing clearly, orienting toward what we value, and taking steps aligned with that orientation—animates the book’s conclusion.
Post-partisan practice embodies Active Hope at the community scale: acting together in uncertainty without requiring certainty.

5. Working Across Difference Through Shared Material Reality

The book shows how people change when they can see the world differently, such as the farmers who only understood soil degradation when they saw the living microbiome under a microscope. Post-partisan practice generalizes this insight: transformation emerges through participatory investigation of the world we depend on, not through argument.

Why This Book Matters Now

We are entering a time when:

• ecological stability is declining

• political narratives are fragmenting

• institutional trust is eroding

• people are seeking meaning, belonging, and agency

Feeding the Future helps readers understand how we arrived here, and how regenerative worldviews offer a compass for the road ahead. Post-partisan practice builds the practical tools and community capacities needed to navigate that terrain.

Together, the book and the framework form a coherent arc:

• The book gives the theory and worldview shift.

• Post-partisan practice gives the method and the pathway.

Who the Book Is For

• food system practitioners and policy makers

• regenerative farmers and land stewards

• community organizers, bridge-builders, facilitators

• scholars and students of law, ecology, political economy, and systems change

• people seeking grounded ways to navigate uncertainty and polarization

• anyone trying to make sense of our civilizational moment

A Note on Pre-Orders

If the themes of Feeding the Future resonate with you, early pre-orders meaningfully support the book’s reach and signal to the publisher, bookstores, and media outlets that there is strong interest in regenerative, community-oriented work.

Your support helps bring this conversation into public life at a moment when it matters greatly.

Interested in bringing these ideas into your community, university, or organization?

Nicole offers:

• keynote talks and workshops

• facilitation for food systems and watershed groups

• consulting on trust-building and cross-worldview collaboration

• training for practitioners using the Post-Partisan Pathways framework