Beyond Excellence

Beyond Excellence: A New Food Ethic for the Future of Humanity and the Earth

Food as a relationship, not just a product
When we talk about food, we’re used to thinking of quality in terms of taste, tradition, origin, processing, and the ability to stand out on the market. Over the years, the word “excellence” has become one of the main tools we use to describe our food products: a way to highlight the territories, cultures, and skills that represent an important part of our history.
But today, this idea of ​​excellence is no longer sufficient and is often misleading.
A food may be prized, recognized, sought-after, and have great economic value, but can we truly call it excellent if, in its production, it depletes the soil, consumes natural resources beyond their capacity to regenerate, creates undignified working conditions, or remains accessible only to a portion of the population?
The challenge of our time is to build a broader concept of food quality. A quality that isn’t limited to the characteristics of the final product, but considers everything behind that product: the land from which it comes, the people who produce it, the economic relationships it generates, and the effects it has on the environment and society.
Food is not simply something we buy and consume. It is a profound relationship between humanity and nature, between the present and the future, between the individual and the community to which they belong.

From conquering nature to collaborating with nature
For a long time, modern agriculture has followed a model based primarily on increasing productivity. This path has allowed significant improvements in food availability, but it has also produced consequences that we can no longer ignore: loss of biodiversity, soil depletion, excessive consumption of resources, the economic fragility of many agricultural systems, social inequalities, crises, and geopolitical conflicts.
The problem is not technology per se, nor scientific progress. The central question is how we use our knowledge and what relationship we wish to establish with the natural world.
Nature is not a simple production machine to be exploited to its fullest potential. It is a complex and living system, in which each element is connected to the others. Fertile soil is not just a physical support for a crop, but an environment rich in relationships between microorganisms, plants, water, climate, and human activity. Our ideological approach is still too influenced by the principles of classical physics, without understanding, also through quantum physics, that reality is much more complex and interconnected.
From this awareness, the agroecological paradigm was born: a way of conceiving agriculture not as a struggle against natural limits, but as an intelligent collaboration with the processes of life.
Agroecology is not just a production technique. It is a cultural vision that recognizes agriculture as a science of relationships, where human knowledge must be integrated with the functioning of ecosystems.

The true quality of food begins before the product
The food that reaches our tables is the result of a long history. Even before being a food, it is the fruit of an agricultural, economic, and social choice.
For this reason, the quality of the future cannot be measured solely by flavor, appearance, or its ability to represent a territory. It must also understand the quality of the process that generated it.
Truly high-quality food is one that keeps the land from which it grows fertile, respects natural balances, and contributes to the preservation of biodiversity. Healthy soil is not just a means of producing today, but a guarantee for those who will produce tomorrow.
But quality also has a human dimension. Behind every food there are people, skills, and work. A food system cannot be considered truly advanced if the economic value produced fails to recognize the dignity of those who grow, raise, process, and distribute.
The quality of food, therefore, is also the quality of relationships.

From Food as a Commodity to Food as a Right
One of the great cultural shifts needed concerns how we interpret the right to food.
Having access to food isn’t just about having a sufficient quantity of food. It means having access to healthy, safe food produced according to criteria that respect people and the environment.
A food system that produces a lot but generates waste, inequality, and environmental degradation demonstrates a profound contradiction. Quantity alone is not synonymous with security or well-being.
Food is an essential good because it affects health, culture, dignity, and the very possibility of living fully. For this reason, it cannot be considered exclusively a commodity subject to market rules alone.
This doesn’t mean denying the economic value of agriculture, but recognizing that the value of food is much greater than its price, and all of this requires a radical reformulation of agri-food policies.
Food also contains often invisible values: the preserved fertility of a territory, the maintained landscape, protected biodiversity, the work of rural communities, the transmission of knowledge between generations.

Agriculture as stewardship of the land
The farmer of the future will not only be a food producer, but a central figure in managing territorial balances.
Farming also means caring for the landscape, protecting the soil, preserving agricultural varieties, and keeping local communities and cultures alive.
This new perspective gives agriculture a broader dimension: not just an economic activity, but a service to society.
The transition to agroecological systems naturally requires innovation, research, and new knowledge. But it also requires a change in mindset: recognizing that productivity cannot be separated from the ability to regenerate the resources that make production possible.

A new economic model for the food system
The future of food will also depend on the ability to build a different food economy.
An economy in which price is not the sole criterion and in which the value generated remains largely local.
More balanced supply chains, more direct relationships between producers and consumers, collaboration between agricultural businesses, local communities, and research can help create more resilient food systems.
Economic sustainability cannot be separated from ecological and social sustainability. Agriculture that destroys its natural foundation or impoverishes the communities that support it does not build wealth: it consumes its own future.

Toward a New Humanism of Food
The great challenge of our time is to rediscover the profound meaning of food.
It is not merely a resource to be produced, a commodity to be sold, or a symbol of prestige. It is an element that unites humanity to the Earth and human beings to one another.
The new food excellence will therefore not only be that of the most sought-after products or the most celebrated territories. It will be that capable of combining pleasure and responsibility, tradition and innovation, economy and justice, production and respect for life.
The food of the future must be evaluated not only for what it offers the consumer, but for what it leaves to the world and how it relates to it.
Because the true value of a food is measured not only by its contents, but also by the relationships it generates and the future it helps build.
From this perspective, cultivating the land means cultivating a new idea of ​​humanity: more aware of its own limits, more respectful of nature, and more responsible towards future generations and the planet that will host them.

Guido Bissanti

Useful bibliography –
– AEMED (2025). Agroecological and Agroforestry Approaches for a Sustainable Future. Proceedings of the 1st Mediterranean Agroecology Congress, 4th AIDA National Congress and 2nd Italian Agroforestry Forum. Agrigento, 9–12 June 2025.
– Bissanti G. (2022), Ecologia tra cielo e terra. Verso l’unica via di convivenza tra Umanità e Natura, Medinova Onlus.
– Bissanti G., Guccione G.D., Manachini B., Quatrini P., Sturla A. (2025), Principi e fondamenti di agroecologia, Medinova Onlus.
– Altieri M.A. (1991), Agroecologia: prospettive scientifiche per una nuova agricoltura, Muzzio.
– Caporali F., Campiglia E., Mancinelli R. (2010), Agroecologia. Teoria e pratica degli agroecosistemi, Città Studi.
– Petrini C. (2005), Buono, pulito e giusto, Einaudi.
– Sen A. (2000), Lo sviluppo è libertà, Mondadori.
– Papa Francesco (2015), Laudato si’.
– Papa Francesco (2020), Fratelli tutti.