Transition In Residency

What happens when two people working on the same transition rarely get the chance to truly step into each other’s world? 

Eatthis. welcomes Marco Lagrand and Paul Verdult to South Holland for a two-day In Residency: a deep dive into the world of food production.
Marco works within healthcare on creating healthier environments, with a strong focus on prevention and on making the healthy choice the attractive choice. He led the plant-based transition in Noordwest Ziekenhuisgroep and is already working on the next sustainable steps forward! Paul Verdult is one of the driving forces behind Plant FWD, bringing people and organisations together to accelerate the shift towards a more plant-based food system. The connection seems obvious!

If we want people to eat healthier and more plant-based, healthcare, food professionals and vegetable producers all have an important role to play. Yet these worlds still too often operate alongside one another, rather than with one another. We want to change that.

For two days, Marco and Paul stepped directly into the world behind our food: meeting growers, entrepreneurs and innovators, seeing how vegetables are produced and discussing where production, health and the plant-based transition can reinforce each other.

Marco:
“What surprised me most is how far Dutch horticulture has already come in reducing chemical crop protection, combined with an enormous capacity to innovate.”

Paul:
“We talk a lot about the future of food, but in Dutch horticulture that future is already being built. What is happening here deserves a much bigger stage.”

And that is exactly why we organise these In Residencies: to connect horticulture with healthcare, gastronomy and the plant-based movement and to give vegetables and the people producing them a much bigger stage.