Swapping supermarkets for soil

How do you feed 2200 people with ideas and with food? The ideas part is easy, compared to the catering. So we took a typically TEDx approach to feeding the multitudes, and asked them to grow their own food.

The idea of crowd-farming the food for the big day next weekend at the Sydney Opera House came from a seed planted by a little company called Grow It Local, which wants to encourage local food production. Working with Matt Moran and ARIA Catering, we wanted food to be part of the program of ideas.

It seemed simple, but logical, to invite people to contribute by growing something we can share and eat; to bypass supermarkets for soil, and commercial catering for a more hands-on, closed-loop approach. And like all good ideas, it grew.

Wherever possible, we have worked directly with growers and farmers, in order to cut the food-chain in half – something that the Slow Food movement describes as turning people from being consumers to being co-producers of their food

Some extraordinary stories have come from this initiative. Ten kilograms of honey were donated by Cate Burton of Queen Bee to Ben Lockett of Nougat Royale to turn into an urban-foraged nougat, along with backyard-grown macadamia nuts and donated fruit.

Another example is the young veal from the Micallef family of Camden, who are working with Marrickville's Feather and Bone food distributors to change the food system so that young bull calves are not killed at birth as something of no value (only female calves are kept and raised to become milk cows).

Something as simple as that story could herald an end to the shocking waste of male calves, and potentially create a market for a cracking new product – a rose-pink, young, veal meat. We think that's an idea worth spreading.

Growing it local in this instance is an acknowledgement of the fact that by supporting our local small-scale bakers, farmers, growers, breeders, butter-makers, bakers and honey producers, we are aware that even the smallest purchasing decision affects the world we live in. It's about our power as consumers, showing people a way of supporting small-scale producers, promoting sustainable agriculture and self-sufficiency.

When you grow something, it changes everything – the way you look at available space, at soil, at the weather, at waste, at purchasing power, at chemical usage, at preservation techniques, at the wisdom of elders, at how you cook and how you eat. And when you form a connection with a grower or a farmer, it changes everything, too. It's relevant to so many of the ideas discussed in TED talks, from architecture and design to community entrepreneurship.

Not everybody can grow things, but it's about all the choices we make, every day. We can choose to buy more food that is local and seasonal and less that is imported or unseasonal, and just stop every now and then and think about where our next meal is coming from. Head off to a farmer's market, teach your kid the joy of pulling carrots out of a pot, plant some peas now for spring, use everything in the fridge, have a chat to your neighbour about their lettuces, read up on urban farming, check out the food stories on Grow It Local's Facebook page – or just talk about food initiatives like this, over a good meal.

One of the things we really wanted to do also was to prove that you can build not only joy and happiness into mass catering, but you can close the loop on waste and over-production. So we're working with OzHarvest to make sure that no food is going to go to waste. OzHarvest volunteers will also be helping us fill the GaiaRecycle waste dehydrating machine installed by Australian company EcoGuardian, which will turn the morning's biodegradable waste into a soil-enricher, 10 times stronger than normal compost. At the end of the day, we're giving this to OzHarvest to use in the kitchen garden at the new education facility they are moving into next month, as part of their training program for the disadvantaged. And so, the idea keeps growing.

We're also inviting the TEDxers to meet their makers: master-baker Michael Klausen of Brasserie Bread has invited his wheat farmer and flour miller to join him in a "food chain" called Meet Your Maker. Klausen will be making bread next to Pepe Saya making cultured butter, served with beautiful beef from two Angus cattle grown on the Barrington Tops and pledged to us when they were calves, alongside jars of home-made pickles and preserves from our backyard growers around New South Wales. It's a rare opportunity to see producers in action – and end up with a brilliant sandwich at the same time.

Jill Dupleix is the food curator for TEDxSydney.